Approached by road, the Falkirk Wheel makes its first appearance across a green field and under a leaden sky. In the distance, the silvery structure looks unremarkable and somehow incomplete, like a bridge to nowhere. Jutting out from the top of a grassy slope, the newly-built aqueduct that carries the Union Canal extends straight out into space, supported by curved concrete stanchions, for several hundred feet. Then abruptly it stops.

During the short walk from the car park down into the natural amphitheatre containing Scotland’s latest, most intriguing attraction, the sun makes a belated appearance, bathing the water-filled basin and the colourful canal-boats in a warm glow, and illuminating the remarkable mechanism that terminates the aqueduct.

It looks nothing like a wheel. From one perspective, it is a pair of giant streamlined handcuffs. From another, it resembles the nodding donkeys of the American oilfields. In truth there is nothing like the Falkirk Wheel anywhere else on Earth. Performing the work once done by 11 canal locks, it is the only rotating boatlift in the world.

Hardy mariners who venture out along the aqueduct to the apparent end of their little canal world are rewarded, not by falling off, but by entering a snug little cradle, which then makes a smooth semi-circular descent to the basin below.

Halfway down, they can wave to the occupants of the other cradle as it passes by on the upward journey. Since cradles and contents are balanced, the mechanism uses little power: “About the same as two electric kettles,” explains the young guide.

In addition to the growing traffic along the canals and through the wheel, a boatload of paying customers departs from the jetty at the visitor centre every half-hour. After sailing round the basin and into the device, they are exposed to a series of electrical hums, mechanical clanks and watery skooshing noises while the cradles are hydraulically sealed to prepare for the lift - and perhaps, one suspects, to make the trip seem more eventful to the very young.

For in keeping with the whole tenor of canal life today - so different from an earlier era when they were pulsing arteries of commerce - a voyage through the Falkirk Wheel is a wonderfully pleasant and gentle experience. It is not action-packed, but it is fascinating: the round-trip up to the aqueduct, along the canal and through a tunnel to another basin encompassing the entire sweep of Scotland’s recorded history.

Above the tunnel stretches the best-preserved section of what was once Rome’s north-west frontier, the Antonine Wall, much of which was uncovered during the 18th century excavation of the canals. From its heavily-defended ramparts, young soldiers of the Empire looked anxiously north towards the brooding mountains, searching for signs of the Caledonians’ next ferocious assault.

The same stunning view meets travellers along the aqueduct today, but their thoughts are very different. Above the tunnel stretches the main Glasgow-to-Edinburgh railway line, whose opening in 1842 marked the beginning of the long and seemingly irreversible decline of the canals. By 1969, according to one enthusiast, the towpaths were very lonely places:

“There were more people walking around the face of the Moon.”

What a difference a few decades make. Earlier this year, at the culmination of the pound;78m Millennium Link project to regenerate the canals and re-connect the heart of Scotland’s first city with the heart of its second, 50,000 people lined their banks.

From a teaching viewpoint, the visitor centre at the newly-opened Falkirk Wheel, the regeneration project’s centrepiece, is still under-developed. Not enough of the immensely rich seam of history, science and industrial heritage connected with the region and the canals is suitably presented. There is neither an educational pack nor an education officer, and the interactive exhibition is cramped, confused and insufficiently interesting.

The best feature of the visitor centre is the close-up view it affords of the wheel itself. The worst is that the concept’s creativity and the design’s beauty are obscured not enhanced by the exhibits, the text of which too often reads like a bad translation from a foreign language.

But the presentational defects should not deter teachers from taking their pupils to the wheel. There are thousands of places of historical interest in Britain, and hundreds that have been developed effectively as tourist attractions.

But there are very few like the Falkirk Wheel, where the human spirit has reached out into the past and, with imaginative flair, breathed new life into an era, a people and a technology that were drifting and dwindling away on the currents of time.

TAKE A TRIP

The Falkirk Wheel is open from 9am to 5pm daily. The round trip by boat from the visitor centre costs pound;6.50 for adults and pound;3.50 for children under 15. A discount of 10% is available for groups of 20 or more; 08700 600 208; www.falkirkwheel.com