We had learned about this monument when researching our trip. When we realized they were located in the town of Falkirk, which was just 12 miles outside of Edinburgh, our first place to visit in Scotland, we of course, had to go and see them. They are called “The Kelpies”.

A Kelpie is a Mythical Beast in Scottish folklore that lives in lochs and other Scottish waterways. While it is a “shape-shifter” it usually presents itself to humans in the form of a beautiful horse to lure them away to their doom, similar to the “sirens” of the old sailor’s myth.

When the town of Falkirk wanted a monument to commemorate the history of the Forth and Clyde Canal, with their horse-pulled barges used in the past to transport goods to and from the area, the “horse” was chosen as the visual icon. Naming the monument after a Scottish mythological beast, made it uniquely Scottish.

We had pre-booked a tour well before we travelled as we had a narrow time-window and did not want to miss the opportunity due to tours being sold out. So, when we showed up, the tour-guide was waiting for us and informed us we were the only ones so it would be a private tour. Awesome! We had wanted to do the tour as it was the only way to see INSIDE the statues. We got the full attention of Allison, the name of the guide, who was delightful and we could not help but feel we got several snippets of information not usually discussed in other tours. We also had the opportunity to ask a ton of questions making the whole tour exceptionally special and very “personal”.

The statues are AMAZING! Built upon a steel tube structure made of approximately 18,000 individual pieces. Each horse head is has 464 steel plates and each one is unique in shape. They were bent and curved into their final shape on location, as they were being installed using a special tool.

We also learned that the artist, Andy Scott, is not only a Scotland’s leading sculptor, he is originally from the town of Falkirk and grew up hearing stories about the horse-pulled barges from his father, thus adding some unique, real-life, back-ground to the design and concept of the monument.

The two horse heads are modeled after two Clydesdale horses, the very same breed of horse originally used to pull the barges. The horses, Duke and Barron, were picked due to their size. At 18.1 and 17.3 hands, they were the largest Clydesdales that could be found in Scotland and were deemed to be perfect for the job of modeling.

Right in front of the visitor’s center were 2 smaller horse heads. They were one of two sets, initially used as a prototype. They were “tested” in a wind tunnel to understand the aerodynamics of the statues and to calculate the requirements of the foundation needed. Those foundations are now bigger and deeper than the statues are tall! 35 feet deep vs. 30 feet tall.
These two sculptures are now the largest equine sculptures in the world and, amazingly, took only 90 days to erect.

After this testing, the smaller statues were used to promote the monument and each set has traveled the world. These smaller versions are identical to the actual statues, but only 1/10 the size. As a small attention to detail, there is a small figurine to show the proportions of a human being against the massive size of the statues.

The following Youtube video has the Artist tell the story of the Kelpies.

The statues are lit up at night, which we did not get to see due to jet-lag, but please checkout the following video on Youtube to see more.
This visit turned out to be the perfect start to our European vacation, which will see us travel to Scotland, Southern England, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.