Once upon a itme there was a river. It was called the Liffey, or An Life, or Anna Livia Plurabelle. They say that the Barrow, the Nore and the Suir are three sisters. The inteniton is poeitcal, misguidedly. Siblings don’t speak delicately to each other, they argue. Rivers don’t babble or sing, they run. They
‘Sion Abhainn’ or wise river is the longest in the country, along the 360km of riverbanks and callows people have lived, boated, fished and farmed, for centuries. In the 1960’s a new town was built on reclaimed marshland along the estuary below Limerick city. The former Rineanna became Shannon town, and this new town focused on its airport and growing industrial estate. The planned layout of the town turned its back to the river, protected by embankments built to counter the threat of flooding. No fishing or pleasure boating here, the estuary is wide, tidal and very muddy.
The year must have been about 1954 or 55. We had spent the day at the seaside – Summercove, outside Kinsale. It was a fairly typical family outing: mother, father, grandmother and two small boys, the younger a baby. I was the elder, about four years old. The day had passed in the usual way
How Vin lost his fin … Well, where do I begin? This story starts in a tangle of nets Vin’s memories are of being trapped and distressed Squeezing himself, so desperate, so tight His little heart beating wildly with fright With heroic strength and the will to survive He forced himself through that net to
Bank Holiday sunshine made the brackish water shimmer and sparkle, as we slid upriver from Carrick on Shannon, on board our beloved boat, a Senior 31. Like the ugly child only its parents could love, we cherished the Iruna, clunks and all. And there was plenty to find fault with, not least her persistently leaky
A man once told me he saw a space craft hovering over Marlfield Lake outside Clonmel. This is a true story as told to me and I believe he believes it. I wasn’t there. It was a nice fresh morning in the late 1990’s, the sort day where you know will it be warm when
While nursing wounded American soldiers in France during the Great War, Sara met Paul Dubois, her future husband. It’s a story of her early days on Bayou St John, New Orleans. Sara came from a family of lock keepers on Dublin’s Grand Canal and loved waterways. . . .As Paul rows his crab boat past
On a sunny day last year my husband, Jim, and I decided to go sailing. My sister Kath and her husband Tony joined us as they were visiting us at the time. Our sailing boat is a 30ft sloop and named Rockabill and is easy to manage. All four of us are pensioners and enjoy
The only thing I remember about my school days was the day I went mitching with my brother Vincent. Somewhere between our house and Boyhan’s Forge we decided we would go mitching for the day. Heavens only knows what put the thought in our heads: perhaps I didn’t have my homework done and knew I
There is nothing like a perfect morning on the water. On a calm day, the flat surface disguises the turbulent chaos beneath. Mist collects mysteriously around the bends of the river. The sun threatens to break through and sparkle but never quite does. The mighty river Shannon was where I grew up, it was such
Many years ago a man named James Quinn (Jimmy your great grandfather) was rearing his family in the countryside and had the mains water supply flowing past his house, the only problem was the water was not filtered and had to be boiled for ten minutes before you could drink it. Jimmy together with his
We are a small fishing club on a stream in Westmeath, Ireland. We are hopelessly biased, but consider it the finest angling water in the entire fairy kingdom. For hundreds of years membership did not change – it was a case of waiting for ‘dead fairies’ slippers’. During that time we enjoyed our sport in
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