Wee Kelpies (Kelpie Maquettes)

Hold yer horses! Are these The Kelpies by artist Andy Scott? A little further up the road than Northumberland, but extra extra oats in yer nosebag if you accurately worked out that at 5ft 8, I'm not tall enough to photograph the tops of the heads of the real Kelpies.

These are in fact the Kelpie Maquettes, and at three meters tall are the 1/10 prototypes for the real McCoys who are called Baron and Duke which are one hundred feet high, that's 300 hands in horse talk!

A maquette is a model for a larger piece of sculpture, that is devised by the artist to visualise how the real piece will look upon completion and to test materials which might be used in the engineering of the final sculpture. These are known affectionately as 'The Wee Kelpies' and are a tenth of the size of the real sculpture.

The Wee Kelpies, like Taylor Swift, have been on a world tour helping to promote Scotland as a tourist destination.

They stabled up in New York to celebrate Scotland Week. They did a furlong at The Grand National and teed off at The Ryder Cup! They trotted round Milan and shacked up in Chicago drawing in a massive one million mini equine fans in the six years they were on the road. Everyone was clamouring for a Kelpie selfie!

We did a double take last year on holiday on the west coast of Scotland when we were driving the route of the Crinan Canal and sailed through Ardrishaig. These Kelpie doubles are a tribute to the horse powered heritage of the region. Clydesdale horses were the inspiration behind these elegant equine sculptures. These heavy horses were known for their 'workhorse' abilities on land, in farming and at pulling 30 tonne boats along canals before the advent of railways, moving heavy materials over long distances during the Industrial Revolution.

The Kelpies were named after the mythical Celtic water horses that could shift their shape and had the strength of ten horses, what could that pull? Roughly, it equates to hoiking along a Boeing 747! The big lads and wee ones celebrated their 10th birthday in April this year.

We were happy to see the more manageable Wee Kelpies who nuzzled sugar cubes from our hands (that bit's a lie. They had no tongues and were made from metal!), but nonetheless, they were beautiful and a real eye-opener in their scenic setting by the Steamer Terminal in Ardrishaig Harbour.

They've been the mane attraction there for the last five years, but “shhhhhhhh” don't let anyone know. The locals are keen not to look a gift horse in the mouth and would really rather like to hang on to these ten yearlings! Ardrishaig is definitely not 'A one horse town'!

Thanks so much to Camilla Hellman of the American Scottish Foundation for the use of the image in Bryants Park. You can watch Camilla interview Andy Scott, discussing the inception and journey of the Kelpies here - Kelpies interview with Andy Scott