Thursday turned out to be another showery and cool day, but not bad for driving. We headed inland (East), passing the Trossach's (the highlands of Rob Roy fame) and Loch Lomond, ending up several hours later at Stirling, where Linda's mother's family hails from. The castle here is truly spectacular – it has an excellent exhibit and presentation, particularly referring to the history of James V and VI/I. It took us several more hours to tour the castle premises, and then a couple more of walking around the old town of Stirling, eventually having a late lunch in a 300 yr-old pub haunted by several ghosts. Our accommodation for the night was only about 20 minutes out of town, in Falkirk, so we made for that, and made ourselves comfortable.
On Friday, we discovered Falkirk was the home of an engineering marvel – the Falkirk Wheel. It is a unique lock system which joins up two different canals. Instead of traditional lift locks, it is a very large wheel which rotates a “tub” of water, and boat, to the level of the other canal. Apparently it is extremely power-efficient, using the equivalent of the power of a few toasters for the operation.
A view of the Falkirk Wheel. You can see the gearing, and the "tub" of water which carries the vessels up/down to the canals.
Another view....the top left channel is the waterway which joins up to the upper canal.
We spent a couple of hours marvelling at this, before heading out to find Linda's family. The area has become quite industrialized, and finding the graveyards and communities of 100 years past turned out to be challenging. We did find a few clues, and visited several cemeteries, but much of the evidence is now gone. 
Linda is still searching for her kin.
By late afternoon it was time to head back to Glasgow, where we had our accommodation booked near the airport. Then we were able to return our rental car, and organize our luggage – we'll only be taking one bag over to Ireland with us, and storing the rest at our hotel, for pickup on our return to fly back out. Dinner, and a lazy night in our room. As we were eating dinner, a red fox sauntered by our window – a bit of wildlife we hadn't expected to see so close to civilization. For Saturday, we have an open day for doing a bit more exploring of Glasgow, and for catching up on internet and mail/etc.
So here it is, Saturday, with a day to explore Glasgow. We took a bus into town, looking around the town centre again – some of it seems familiar, as we were here a month ago....but we must have been a bit zoo ed out then, as a lot of it seems all new! Or maybe, with my age, I'm just easy to amuse with the same things! A bit of lunch, and then a bus trip to – gasp!- another distillery! We managed to find the Glen Goyne distillery at the end of the #10 bus line, and took our 7th tour – each time learning a bit more. This time, we paid a bit more, and got a “taster's tour”, which included four extra tastes of various flavours of the Glen Goyne waters of life. 
The stills of GlenGoyne
By the time we got back to the centre of the city, it was after 5 PM, so we decided to just walk around a bit. Amazingly to us, the streets, and especially the pedestrian malls, were filled with people. Apparently most of the city comes into town to shop and walk about on a Saturday evening.....it seemed that most of the city was there. 
Even late on a rainy Saturday afternoon, the city streets of Glasgow get crowded.
We did manage to find our bus back to the airport and hotel where we're staying, planning on an early evening to allow a fairly early morning wake-up and flight to Belfast in the morning. So next you'll be hearing from us from Northern Ireland. Slainte.
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