Stand before The Kelpies and you feel the slow, steady pull of water and history. These twin horse-head sculptures rise from the Helix parkland beside winding canal locks, a modern landmark rooted in centuries of Scottish landscape and labour. Inspired by folklore and the real horses that powered mills and barges, The Kelpies are both myth and memory - magnificently scaled, they command the lowland horizon and invite the traveller to linger.
This travel poster celebrates that meeting of story and structure. Imagine the scene at dusk: the last light gilding the steel faces, soft shadows pooling in the towpath channels, and the green sweep of fields and distant hills folding away towards the Forth. The poster reduces those details to bold planes of colour and confident shapes, the same economy of line that made classic travel posters so alluring. It is an invitation to roam - to follow the old canals, pause at lock gates, and discover how modern Scotland honours its industrial past while embracing open space and community life.
History here is tactile. The canals carried grain and coal; draught horses pulled boats along narrow towpaths for generations. The Kelpies honour that labour and the myths that haunted the waterways - stories of kelpies, shape-shifting water spirits, of horses both benevolent and wild. In that juxtaposition lies romance: a reminder that the landscape carries both practical purpose and poetic weight. Walk the paths beneath the sculptures and you sense a conversation between past and present, a place where local stories become civic centrepieces.
The colours chosen for this poster echo that conversation. Warm ochres and muted greens recall high summer on the central belt; soft blues suggest canal depths and distant skies.
