It seems superfluous to write about water in Ireland. After all, aren’t we blessed with an abundance of the stuff, though what goes into your glass does seem a tad more useful than the stuff that goes down your neck. Haven’t we even used the word for “water” to give the world liquid refreshment? The Irish “uisge beatha” is the same as “aqua vitae” and the water of life is nothing more than whiskey.
But you’re not reading this to discuss the finer points of distillation; you want to end up floating on the water, not in it. And you could not have come to a finer place. Let me begin, like St Patrick, with a confession. As the local lifeboat coxswain once said to me over a jar: “You’re the kind of eejit who knows enough to get himself into trouble, but not enough to get himself out of it.” So if you’re expecting tall tales in the style of Conrad or O’Brien, then I’m afraid that my nautical sagas are less epic than epicure. After all, when you reach a certain age, there is no virtue in being weather beaten, but there’s a lot of comfort in knowing how to find the nearest decent hostelry, especially if you have had quite enough of being a galley slave.
Nor will you find storm-tossed journeys with salty Ahabs roaring “Ten degrees to larboard, Mr Starbuck!”
Instead you will hear morning after the night before throats croaking: “Jaysus, right hand down a bit, Paddy, before we hit that bridge!” The only life and death experience we can offer is the hangover and the rigor mortis grip of one hand on the wheel and the other on the mug of coffee fortified by the coats of an entire kennel. And they say that drinking and driving is dangerous…….
Enough of this banter. Of course Ireland does not come to mind as one of the great cruising destinations – we have no glacier-filled valleys or sun-kissed beaches or palm-clad Pitons with which to tempt you. Riverdance notwithstanding, Ireland does not do calypsos. On the other hand (yes, the one that is not gripping the tiller or the map), can you imagine anything more serene than a still summer morning on the Shannon as you glide along at a stately 4 knots with only the mists of the rising sun, the haunting calls of the river birds and the ghosts of exiles past for company? Please do not for one minute imagine that Ireland has become only a surfeit of shopping centres or a concrete kingdom. Indeed, those of us who love the water as much as the land will tell you that our realm is the embodiment of Yeats’ “peace dropping slow”.
Ireland and its water, like the shamrock, are tripartite. We have boat hire on the inland waterways; we have ports of call for cruise ships large and small and we have city tours. Being Irish, we will of course start at the wrong place and, like T S Eliot, arrive at the beginning in order to know it better.
Should you decide to visit Ireland on a cruise, you will invariably call at one or more of the ports on the southern or eastern coasts. This is an accident of geography – no more, no less. Starting on the south coast, you will call at Cobh (the port for Cork) and you will see the excellent Cobh Heritage Story, based in the old railway station. This tells the story of so much sad emigration and the tragic sinking of the Luistania, as well as the last port of call of the Titanic. On the bright side, Cork has the honour of being the 2005 European Capital of Culture and makes for an excellent day excursion, what with Blarney castle and the English Market in the city centre.
Next along the coast is Waterford, settled by the Vikings in the tenth century and set at the confluence of the Three Sisters – the Nore, the Suir and the Barrow. A fabulous location, as well as home of the famous crystal factory.
Naturally, Dublin is the obligatory visit for most cruise ships (30 last year) and there are a whole range of excursions from visits to the Book of Kells to a wonderful day out in the Wicklow Hills, taking in Glendalough and St Kevin. Those of you who have cruised before will know that it is very difficult to do justice to any city in a 10 hour call but it will give you an inkling of what will be waiting for you on your return.
Heading northwards (and midsummer cruisers have the pleasure of wondering at the silhouettes of the Mountains of Mourne en route) the next port of call is Belfast, which has attracted – improbably at first but increasingly in the past 3-4 years – numerous cruise ships. Indeed, the Grand Princess calls here on its transatlantic positioning cruise in September, an occasion of great rejoicing for the local tourist industry.
As a Blue Badge guide, I had the pleasure of taking a party from the ship to the Giant’s Causeway, and a fine day out was had by one and all.
And finally, we have Derry/Londonderry, much beloved by the US Navy as the start or end point of transatlantic convoys in World War II. Ironically, cruise ships (including German ones) tie up beside the quay where the U Boat fleet surrendered in 1945.
So much for cruising. Sailing on a yacht around Ireland tends to be a horse of another colour, if you get my equine drift. Most visitors make their own arrangements but Irish waters are not really suited to Caribbean bareboat charters or Greek or Turkish flotillas because we are at the mercy of Atlantic depressions and the number of lighthouses and reef markers round our coasts bare witness to the perils lurking for the unwary.
So I’ll proceed, saving your grace, to cruising the inland waterways of Ireland. And may I begin my commending, without reservation, the Inland Waterways Association of Ireland – www.iwai.ie. You will not find a finer or more informative site on the island. From moorings to moorhens, this site will give you all the information you need on cruiser hire, navigational updates, places to eat and all the other information the visitor might need.
A glance at the map will show you why river cruising is just what the ship’s doctor ordered. The river Shannon rises in the hills near the Fermanagh-Leitrim border and meanders through the west of the country on its way to a huge estuary at the airport which bears its name. It is entwined with Ireland’s history – and even today the counties west of the Shannon are an entity to themselves. If the Romans crossed the Rubicon, then the crossing of the Shannon by every invading army represented the transition from pillage to ethnic cleansing. Everyone knew that a general who crossed the Shannon wasn’t here for smash ‘n grab – he meant business.
You can see this for yourself. In the flat midlands of Ireland, south of Athlone, the Shannon flows past the ancient monastic site of Clonmacnoise, now as silent as it once was bustling. Nearby, archaeologists found the remains of a wooden bridge which marked the transit from a semblance of civilisation in the east to the wilderness which was the west. Anyone heading westwards would have been aware of the unwritten “Here be heathen” sign on the far bank. Indeed, the Irish word “Iar” means both “west” and “extreme” – literally, “beyond the pale” – in every sense.
When I was in primary school (oh, a couple of lifetimes ago, since you ask) we were taught that Ireland was like a saucer, with the rim of mountains round the edge and the water-collecting bowl in the middle. And so it remains. For in addition to the Shannon, Ireland is criss-crossed with rivers and bogs. And the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have inadvertently bequeathed us the missing links which make Ireland such a splendid cruising destination – the canals. Their names are a silent tribute to the navvies who vainly toiled to make industry possible in the most out of the way places: The Grand Canal, The Royal Canal. The Ulster Canal and the Shannon-Erne Canal.
When I was a child, the canals had fallen into disrepair as the railways and the roads ruled supreme. Canals were splendid dumping grounds for bikes and prams. Now, how the situation has changed. Parkinson’s Law applies to traffic as much as work; the morning commute to all the major cities is as much a nightmare as it is elsewhere – albeit not on the Beltway scale – and the slow, deadly depopulation of the land has drained large tracts outside the east coast corridor. The New Pale reaches from Belfast to Wicklow and inland to Mullingar and Kildare. Go beyond that – and you will have the country largely to yourself.
The most famous link in our canal system is the Shannon-Erne Canal, linking the two great waterways.
I have had the pleasure of travelling through it twice in the past five years –and it is, as you would say, “something else.”
Those of you who have implored the world to at least slow down for while so that you can get off the carousel of time (those are just for the musical amongst you) will know instinctively that dropping the tempo is as crucial as downsizing to the human psyche. This is what the canal offers you. There are numerous hire agencies all along the river, although the major centre is the imaginatively named Carrick on Shannon. Indeed, there are so many 4,6 and 8 berth vessels for hire that Saturday (changeover day) is known locally as “dodgem day”.
Instruction is minimal – forward and reverse being popular options – and one is also shown how to approach a mooring: bow first, then wheel hard over and let the stern settle to the pontoon – but preferably not on it.
You can’t cause a speeding accident – most of the craft have a regulator at 6 knots and the speed limit on the canal is 5 mph - so marine drag racing is not an option. And then, assuming that you have stocked up with liquid and solid nourishment, off you go.
Going through the canal is child’s play so, as W C Fields once observed, it is a good idea to bring a six year old along. Just in case. There are 16 locks and one can, at a push, get through in day, but this is taxing work and is therefore as desirable as personal interview with the IRS. Anyway, as we say: When God made time, he made plenty of it.
There are three or four villages along the canal and a couple of major towns (by Irish standards) at either end: Enniskillen and Carrick. The navigation markers are clearly marked and as long as you stay in the channel, you have no problems.
A word of advice and another Irish proverb: If you want to test your friends, go on a journey with them. This is particularly true of cruising – you are in a cramped space and things can get very fractious, especially around the queue for the washroom! Think twice before travelling with anyone but your beloved.
But, assuming that you have solved the practicalities, there is nothing I have ever experienced – apart possibly from a safari – to equal the peace and quiet of drifting downstream, like Jerome K Jerome, past fields, woods, ruined castles and the very occasional byway. Herons, kingfishers and voles for company – it is the epitome of every river eulogy from Wind in the Willows to Anthony Newley’s “Messing About on the River.”
And when you think that you’ve had enough of nature, lo and behold, up pops another lock and you wait for the lights to go green so that you can enter a darkened dungeon and rise – or float in and fall. As a metaphor for life, locks take some beating. And you meet the occasional cruiser or narrow boat and you may fall in with good company for an evening’s entertainment – or you may have the pleasure of watching some other poor greenhorn make a total mess of docking.
No matter. What remains is the ineffable feeling of solitude, of unwinding and of being totally at peace with the world. Switch the cellphone off – all your calls will be waiting for you when you come back. Don’t buy the papers and leave the TV untouched. Converse with the cattle; learn to talk with your fellow traveller and remember that a scoop or two of an evening will settle most arguments.
And finally, don’t forget that you will always see much more of any city from the water. From the bateaux mouches to the Circle Line cruise via the klongs of Bangkok, a boat tour is always more revealing. All the major towns and cities of Ireland offer water tours, the most memorable being the Viking Adventure in Dublin which operates from an old WWII DUKW (pronounced “duck”). A combination of road and river, the passengers are encouraged to don horned helmets and to imagine themselves as the Vikings who turned the “wicker ford” into the “dark pool” – no longer “Baile Atha Cliath”, but ”Dublin”. Historically inaccurate – but great fun!
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