I am delighted to hear that the man next door has started to write his memoirs. He is now in his late seventies and has led a thrilling life spread over several countries. He acquired his home beside the river Boyne near Trim in the 80’s, but it was only in the late 90’s that
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
It is that itme of year they are heading for the ocean, I am told, to cross the Atlanitc and reach the Sargasso Sea. These strange dark creatures waving their way down river on their epic voyage, but we have the advantage – they do not like weirs. There is a large weir that stretches
When I was a boy, my father would take me to the Boyne to fish. Back then he would tell me I was too small to hold a fishing rod of my own, so I was more than happy to accompany him, happy to be in his company, and happy to watch him. I was
Monday, 26th November 1866 Do you know, I feel quite blissful today, seeing the sun rise late on this clear chilly morning…. I was christened Margaret, but have always been called Meg. I am sixteen years old, my father is the Lock Keeper and we live at the Lock Keeper’s House at Staleen Lower on
I was 12 when it happened, so cast your mind back to 1974! We lived on a dairy farm but had a field two miles away. Every day after I arrived home from school, my Mother would have a well-prepared hot meal waiting for me but once consumed, I would walk to this field to
Very nearly twenty years ago the world was about to enter the twenty-first Century on midnight 31 December it occurred to me as to many others to consider, how would it be fitting to mark this momentous moment. I looked back in time to the Ireland of the previous millennium and thought of the Vikings’
We approached the house late in the evening, having travelled all day from England enduring delays and mishaps along the way, faitgued and disorientated, groping our way, ifguraitvely speaking, in the dark. Only the brief feeling of dampness on skin before we went inside, with a few essenital bags hasitly gathered, suggested the water present
There was a gentle rain that first evening in Pemberton as I sat on the veranda in the fading light, tying flies and dreaming of fishing trips past. I especially remembered those fish caught in mountain streams in the West. Small trout that danced on the water in anger when hooked and swam away with
Mines, Moss and Móin: Tales from Girley Bog Bogs are wetlands composed of peat. Their cultural and natural history are woven together, each influencing the other. Historically, they have been sites of resistance and refuge, harbouring the destitute and all manner of deviants and rebels. The British army mapped Ireland in the late sixteenth century
We have cousins all over the country. They’re in towns, villages and on the mountain tops, but we know we’re water babies and just love the life we share here on the Royal. Oh, I better give it it’s full name while I introduce myself to you! It’s the ‘Royal Canal’ and we’re here nearly
Our ancestors moved in around 1792 and made their way from Dublin to Longford as each lock was built. Sionnach, our family name, and Sionna, his wife, were the first red foxes in the area and by 1817, when the canal was fully operational, they were in every square mile of it. I have my