The stone harbour in Lecarrow makes a welcome change from Lough Ree. The short Lecarrow Canal links the harbour with Blackbrink bay on Lough Ree.

We take Driftwood on a journey from Lecarrow across Lough Ree and we head in a northerly direction stopping off at the towns of Ballyleague and Lanesborough. Then we press on to Dromod passing through Tarmonbarry and Rooskey along the way. The weather is just okay, not great just okay. Still I always say that even a bad day on the boat is still much better than a good one in work!

Continue reading “River Shannon cruise, Lecarrow to Dromod aboard Driftwood.”

We untied the boat from its moorings in Athlone Town Marina and headed up river towards Lough Ree. There was a stiff breeze coming from the north east and not only did this make it quite cold but it stirred up the lake quite a bit. We turned at the Lough Ree Yacht club because the lake would have been quite rough and Marion is not a fan of big waves!

Continue reading “A short Cruise on the River Shannon, Athlone to Lough Ree”

The 2018 boating season is up and running and this is Driftwood’s first boat trip of the year. Now it’s not a very long boat trip but you see it opens the doors for us. Because up until now we were moored in a spot that made getting the boat out quite difficult. Now though we will be able to take the boat out when ever we want and go exploring the rivers and lakes once again. The current has dropped from the winter flow to the very sedately summer flow. The River Shannon drops a mere six meters over more than a three hundred Klm stretch so as you can imagine there is usually very little flow on it.

We gave it a bit of a wash down too which wasn’t east in this cold weather. We

Continue reading “First boat trip of the season, Driftwood on the River.”

In this episode we found ourselves out and about the river on a beautiful sunny winter’s day. So we said lets put up the drone and this is the result:

There is an old canal & Lock off Lough Key that belonged to the Rockingham Estate. It was used to transport turf (peat) from the bog near Keel lake to the Rockingham Estate. Before I stumbled upon it I never realised that there was a lock chamber on the Rockingham Canal.

Continue reading “Lost canal & lock on lough Key”

Waterways Ireland are replacing the lock gates on this magnificent lock at Meelick on the River Shannon. And Waterways Ireland have taken the unprecedented step of allowing members of the Inland Waterways Association of Ireland access to the site. This is a first and I hope the first step in the right direction, and maybe the next time they might go a step further and open a site to the general public.

After all there is not much point in preaching to the converted. I’d love to see a school tour visiting such a site, and it might ignite an appreciation of the wonderful waterways we have.

Want to know how much it costs to get into boating?

Not as much as you may think… Boating is affordable and in this video I’ll show you how anyone can manage to get on the water the easy way.

We started off with a small plywood day boat that we took our two children on a two week holiday on, not a great idea! That boat was called The Four of Us, although we all agreed very quickly that it wasn’t the boat for us.

Continue reading “How much does a boat cost? The easy way to get into boating.”