Tag Archives: weir

Killaloe and Ballina

Nice to see they’re going to get a Discover Day.

Annoying the neighbours

It would be unfair to condemn the proposed opening of a canal to Clones without also condemning the proposed reopening of the Park Canal in Limerick (and the Newry, when I get around to it). The link is to a top-level page; the first substantive page has a lead to the second, the second to the third and so on up to the fifth.

The Limerick Navigation

As a preliminary to increasing coverage of the old Limerick Navigation, I have improved the section’s top-level page. I added maps of the separate sections of the navigation and distances (in eighths of miles) from Prothero and Clark.

 

The Suir Navigation

News reaches us that the fisheries folk, who were threatening to block the Suir (Carrick to Clonmel) navigation with a weir so that they could count fish, have removed the material they had put on site without planning permission. Let joy be unconfined (but let not vigilance be relaxed).

Dredging

Here are some photos of dredging and related operations under way in Limerick. There are some pics of small workboats too.

Dredging in Limerick

The Limerick Leader has a story here.

Two more sisters

Members of the Heritage Boat Association have, in recent weeks, visited Piltown (Co Kilkenny) and Portlaw (Co Waterford) by barge, the first time in many years that large vessels have been up those rivers.

Many of the published accounts of Portlaw, including the Heritage Council’s Heritage Conservation Plan, pay inadequate attention to the navigation of the Clodiagh; it may have been even richer than we thought.

The HBA has a press release about some significant finds at Portlaw.

The owners of the barge Hawthorn joined other boats for the trips and wrote about them here:

Here is the relevant section of the OSI map for Portlaw (choose one of the Historic options). Here is where the Pil joins the Suir (zoomed out).

Here is my own article (in need of updating) about Portlaw and the Clodiagh.

Incidentally, I contend that the OSI maps are wrong in describing the gates on the canal as flood gates: they would open to, rather than close against, an incoming flood, and would prevent the discharge of an outgoing flood.

 

Love me tender

Waterways Ireland tender documents are a source of interesting and occasionally useful information. At present WI is looking for tenders for

  • a hospitality guide
  • turf (sod peat) for bank repairs on the Royal Canal
  • automation of certain weirs. Expressing an interest in this one will allow you to get some original (Shannon Commissioners) drawings of parts of the  old weirs.

 

Buggering up the Barrow

Have you ever wondered, as you grounded on a sand bar or fought a current upstream, quite why the River Barrow is so challenging?

Here is a confession (with photos) from the man wot done it — in 1931 ….

Forts, weirs, piers, power stations …

… just some of the things you can see from the Killimer to Tarbert ferry.

Actually, I lied about the weirs, but they were there once. As were the salmon.