Stand under two steel horse heads thirty meters tall

Two horse heads made of steel plate, each thirty meters high, stand on either side of a lock where the Forth and Clyde Canal meets the River Carron, outside Falkirk. They are the Kelpies, after the shape-changing water spirits of Scottish folklore that were said to have the strength of ten horses. The sculptor Andy Scott modeled them on Clydesdales, the heavy draft horses.

They are the first stop on the second morning, out of Edinburgh and before the road climbs onto Rannoch Moor. The heads went up in 2013 and were unveiled in April 2014, and nearly a million people came to see them in the first year.

Up close the scale stops making sense. From the path at the base the heads fill the sky, one looking down and the other thrown back, and every plate in them catches the light differently as the clouds move.