John and I went to Britain in 2013 because our son was getting married in a Scottish castle in late July.  We flew to London on May 31, did a 16-day cruise in the Baltic, then spent a week in London before flying to Edinburgh.  We then had almost a month to travel around Scotland before the wedding.

After picking up our rental car we drove toward Galsgow where we were going to have a visit with my three cousins.  But first we went to see the Falkirk Wheel; which is a very cool lift lock to move boats. One of the fun aspects of our visit was a ride in a boat that gets lifted up by the wheel, makes a short run to the end of the channel and then comes back down.

There was a nice view of the town as we rode to the top.   Once at the top, the boat went through this tunnel, turned around and came back to catch the wheel to the bottom again.  It is a very clever design.

My mother had three sisters.  The two eldest came to Canada as War Brides after they married a couple of fellows from BC who were stationed in Scotland during the war.  My mother met my father when she came to our town in British Columbia to visit her sisters who had settled there with their husbands after the war.

All of the girls were born in Scotland but the family had emigrated to Canada when my mom was just a baby.  The girls went back to Scotland in 1937 after their parents had died within 6 months of each other.  Mom returned to Canada about 1940 when Britain was under extreme threat from Germany and lived with the Winnipeg couple that had fostered her after the death of her parents and before she and her sisters returned to Scotland.  When two of her sisters ended up in British Columbia after the war she came from Manitoba to visit them when she was 17.  She met my father, they married, and she stayed in the same town as her two older sisters.

The sister next older to my mother never moved from Scotland.  She and her husband had three daughters and since we were in Scotland we made arrangements to visit them.  They all lived near Glasgow so after we had seen the Falkirk Wheel we drove to the restaurant where we had arranged to meet.Cost and distance has prevented many visits between the Canadian and Scottish cousins as we all grew.   We saw them in 1986 during our first trip to Britain, The youngest sister came to Canada every few years for quite awhile, and the eldest, who is my age, came over a few years ago, but the middle ‘girl’ had never been to Canada.  She has since passed away so I am very glad we had the opportunity to visit with them and other members of the family while we were in Scotland.