Tag Archives: flow

Buggering up the Barrow

In February 2012 Waterways Ireland published a study of the River Barrow called The Barrow Corridor Recreational, Tourism and Commercial Product Identification Study. I’ve devoted a lot of time to the document and I confess that, although I’m in favour of WI’s conducting these studies, I found this one rather disappointing. The principal problem, as I see it, is that the document just doesn’t hang together: it is not clear how the recommendations derive from the analysis. I also thought that its recommendations on navigation were weak, suggesting a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Barrow.

I haven’t finished putting my thoughts on the subject together because I want to do the study justice, but I have put up six pages about the report, linked from an overview page here. I need to give the navigation page a little more thought; when it’s finished I’ll link it to the overview page and mention the matter here.

Lough Ennell and the Royal Canal

Here is an account of the background to, and the main features of, the proposed supply of water from Lough Ennell to the summit level of the Royal Canal. It does not discuss the amounts of water involved; I intend to cover that on a separate page.

Up the Barrow

A new study from WI and others is mentioned here. It doesn’t seem to be available on the WI website yet, but I haven’t yet finished reading the Erne and Lough Ree/Mid-Shannon studies that are available on the same page.

I might disagree with some of the conclusions of some of these studies, but I very much welcome the fact that they are being done and that WI is developing and promoting the waterways “product”. If only I could convince it not to waste money on the Clones Canal ….

Update: WI have a press release up, with a photo of a chap who has come out in a very fetching garment.

Limerick dredging

The Limerick Post has news here.

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 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).

Getting the goat

What body is the “Inland Waterways” referred to in this story? I didn’t think that WI had operations in Co Mayo. Could it perhaps be “inland fisheries” that supplied the boat?

Pat Lysaght to the rescue

The Limerick Leader has a story that updates my piece on Limerick dredging.

Dredging

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

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.