I travelled back up to Glasgow on Friday 18th April ready to start back at College on Monday and thought that it would be a great idea to go along to the opening event for what will be one of Scotland’s largest pieces of Art “The Kelpies” The site in Falkirk has been redeveloped to provide a grand new tourist attraction for the area which is hoped to bring new jobs and additional development for this area of Scotland.
I was really looking forward to the event as it is not that often you get the chance to be a part of something as grand and imposing as this. I contacted some of my friends and we travelled over to Falkirk in the early evening to try and get a glimpse of the park before it went dark. Unfortunately because of the opening ceremony we could not get close enough for any decent pictures and decided to grab something to eat before we started the walk around the Helix park.
We arrived at our appointed time slot 9:30 pm, parked the car and went to join the queue. We entered the park and you could sense the excitement of the people around us. The helpful security staff made sure that we kept moving-on ensuring that we saw all of the magnificent show, which lasted around 90 minutes.
We could see strange lights on the path in front of us and as we got closer we could see the path lit by fountains of water which were constantly changing colour. It was amazing to watch the water dancing in the calm of the evening as the colours changed every couple of minutes. You just had to walk through them it was impossible to resist.
Passing the lake with a floating sign as its centre piece displaying the title of the show “ Home “ we walked towards the main sculptures. Next to the pathway there were some very warming open fires, we stumbled upon a group of performers dressed in a very outlandish costumes. They were stood perfectly still, like statues, when we first found them and I just had to take a closer look. I took my chance to get in on the act and stood behind them for a picture, just at that moment they started to move, reciting poetry as they quirkily moved along the path using jerky movements. It was both bizarre and yet mesmerizing at the same time.
We then crossed the canal and found ourselves on the path around the wonderful sculptures that we had all come to see. They were lit by projected light with pyrotechnic lights erupting all around giving a very imposing appearance of the mythical water horses “The Kelpies”. Over 30 metres tall the pair of water horses created by artist Andy Scott became the focus of our attention as the light show blazed all around us. We were so tempted to stop and film but the stewards made sure that after a couple of minutes at each vantage point we all moved along making room for the people behind us.
I thoroughly enjoyed the evening and was so glad that we made it back in time to be part of it.
Here is a little bit of video that I took which gives you a little taster of what we experienced 🙂 My Dad has added an audio track to the video with me singing “Diamonds Are Forever” as he thought that the event was very James Bond.