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I’m sure you know what I mean: long hours, often at night, spent in the garret, poring over dusty tomes, searching for tiny fragments of information that, placed in the right context and interpreted with the skill of the trained scholar, provide a clue that leads to yet more tomes …. The search, extending over many months, that finally results in a small nugget of information, something that nobody else has noticed ….

I was trying to work out a route from one side of the island to the other. One possibility was a route through Johnstown, Co Kilkenny. I looked at a map. The R502, the road from Johnstown to Templemore, is called, at the Johnstown end, Canal Road.

Could this be a CLUE?

Johnstown historian Susan Garrett very kindly confirmed that there was indeed a canal there, and I’ve since found it on the 1839 OS map. She has kindly promised to send me some more information; in the meantime, I have put a holding page under Lost Irish waterways.