'Have you ever been up Mountain River?' It's a question we've been asked on numerous occasions and, until very recently, one we could only reply 'not yet' to. Well we've now been up, and returned with more questions than answers.
The Hawthorn Blog
Liveaboard life and general wanderings on the Irish Inland Waterways.
Giles
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As long as it isn't crowded with boats and the weather is favourable, there are few overnight moorings more peaceful than the jetty at Clonmacnoise. Or so we thought when intending to do so Friday last.
Fireworks on the river in Carrick on Shannon prove tempting, so we take a late dinghy run from Jamestown.
The stretch of the River Shannon below Jamestown Bridge is one of its prettiest, but also one of its most dangerous. A few photos and some information for the curious.
Could we lend a hand getting 72M up the Royal Canal from Spencer Harbour to Ashtown? Of course we could...
Dirty doings at Dromod? Not really: Waterways Ireland have just shifted the pump out.
Tagged in:
River shannon
Just a very quick update of some changes we noticed when passing through Rooskey.
Tagged in:
River shannon
I'm sure we're not alone in not being able to look at a thin blue line on a map without wondering if the dinghy will fit, and if it does how far we'll be able to go, but here's four 'minor' rivers we've played on recently.
We travel to Dublin to spend a weekend at the rally in Ringsend Basin. If we needed an excuse for going we might say the reason was to witness the handing over of the money raised by the HBA 'River Rats' project to the Irish Cancer Society, but we don't: we went for a bit of a party. And that's just what we had.
After a long delay, blog service is resumed and we go up the rivers Cappagh and Killcrow. This run, while short and reasonably simple, becomes ever more interesting the more I look at the landscape, and I'm indebted to Brian Goggin for helping me make sense of it.
Oh, and the reason for the long delay in blogs is that the site is now running on up to date software (thanks Colman!) all of which started because the 'subscribe to updates' link above wouldn't work. Well it bloody well does now - it's been one of those nightmares!
The joy of being at one with the river's flow returns as we move away from Athlone. Shannon Harbour and Banagher are exotic enough for our first few days, and we have friends to see, work to do, and bridges to survey.
A run to Lanesborough sees us try the Steamer Channel for the first time. We head up the Inny River and cycle to join the HBA.
With a week long high pressure forecast we escape Athlone for a run on Ree and Barley Harbour proves ideal for some quiet time
With a need to visit Portaneena Marina to do a little work we make the most of a glorious winter's day for a brief cruise. The CSIG project goes from strength to strength.
Some praise for Athlone, and the joy of shore-power.
As we're paused between the high jinks of Christmas and the coming new year, it seemed a good time to sum up 2012, and to consider what we're hoping 2013 might bring.
After years of dithering, we've bitten the bullet and gone for a solar set up.
Hawthorn's crew may have been reduced to two, but life goes on. I reflect on Hobbes's lifetime of boating, and eating.
What can I say? Hobbes, our beloved companion of over thirteen years, has stolen his last sausage. We suspect we're not going to be the only one's to miss him.
