“Christ! It’s bloody freezing!” And so began my niece’s swim in the cold, dark waters of the Lower Erne.  I had gone in first but, protected by a decent enough layer of fat and both knowing  what was coming and that a scream would result in my swimming alone, I had controlled my breath. After several recent dips I am getting used to these immersions but for warm pool swimmers they can be quite a shock. Watching and listening to her daughter Harriet, my sister grimaced at the deal she had done with her son Matthew, and husband, Graham: if they used the canoe she would go swimming. To her credit she did come in but I have to add that I hope she does not use that kind of language in her classrooms! And there we all were (well most - my mother and Jill wisely remained on Hawthorn) splashing about in a manner befitting holiday makers.

 

The cold water of the lough had not been the first shock of the Blake’s holiday: that had come the evening before when they realised that three star accommodation in Northern Ireland is not the same as three star accommodation in England and Scotland. In a way we were to blame as there are not that many holiday homes with mooring potential. We too thought we had dropped a clanger when we could not find the jetty attached to the grounds of the house (the very reason the house had been booked). It took the combined effort of Google Earth and two trips in the dinghy to find where it lay buried in a reed bed, into which, after several goes, we managed to get Hawthorn close enough to put a gang plank out. The upside of this manoeuver was our being held fast by the reeds and the lough shore, so mooring ropes were not needed; the downside was having to go into the weedhatch to clear the propeller each time we took the boat out. Not that we were moaning as it was a glorious spot in a corner of Blaney Bay on the southern shore of the lough and far enough off the beaten track to be quiet yet just short of the point when navigating the Lower Erne in a wind becomes interesting. This meant that we could use the boat to go to south east towards Enniskillen if it was windy/cold/wet or, in the highly unlikely event that summer returned, we could go north west into the vastness of the Broad Lough.

We visited Tully Castle last August when out with the Misfit Mariners and, with it being just a couple of miles west of Blaney Bay,  thought it a good spot to cruise to with the family on the first full day of their holiday. That others had the same idea of making the most of the warm still weather was evident when we approached the jetty, one side of which was full of large white cruisers, with the other crammed full of their tenders, speed boats and similar aquatic toys.  Using the smaller boats on this side meant that the cruiser owners could sit in the sun with a view of the lough. Having anchored off the jetty we spent much of our day watching them ignoring the obvious disappointment of boat owners and hirers wanting to use the jetty or visit the castle (the rule may be ‘first come, first served’ but they must have been pretty thick skinned). We weren’t bothered: the dinghy got us ashore for a stroll up to, and around, the castle, and being in the bay made it easy for us to swim, canoe and for the younger members of the party to play in the dinghy. We even stayed much later than intended before finishing the day with a gentle cruise across the lough and behind the islands around Castle Archdale. We had been warned that this would be where folk went to play and it seemed every speedboat and jetski ever launched in Northern Ireland was tearing up and down the narrow channels. Fearing that the weight of Hawthorn bouncing on her ropes would tear the mooring cleats clean out of the jetty we only stopped briefly at White Island before returning across the lough in the fading evening light. A glorious day that only added to my family’s insistence that Jill and I are ‘jammy bastards’. Our only hope was that the weather would continue though, of course, it didn’t.

We were to spend several more days exploring Lower Lough Erne. Some of this time was in the family’s company, at others they took themselves off in the car. Mum, was determined to visit Marble Arch caves in the hope that the boats would be running through the subterranean river, an experience she missed out on last year due to heavy rainfall.  Somethings just aren’t meant to be and the family returned disappointed when the same scenario happened this year. It did not seem to matter to much to Matthew, whose idea of boating heaven is to fly about in our dinghy on the wide open lough rather than be trapped in a dark and dripping cave deep underground. Later in the week, we had a surprise up our sleeve in the form of a loan of a friend’s speedboat - a boat so fast that it made our little dinghy seem positively pedestrian. Unfortunately it was twenty miles away on the Upper Lough which meant Jill and I took Hawthorn on from Enniskillen one evening while the family followed down in the car to Knockninny the following morning.

The generosity of friends here constantly amazes us but never in my wildest dreams did I anticipate being lent a Monterey speed boat for a day (speedboat aficionados get excited about them, apparently)The owner of the boat, Alfy, is one of only two boating contacts here that we knew in England prior to our Irish adventure and, after briefly showing me how to get on the plane and trim the boat, he stood on the jetty and waved us goodbye. His last words before we left were ‘you need to be on your toes as things come up on you very quickly’! I left the jetty gently and motored out some way at tickover to let the ‘beast’ come up to temperature. Then I let it fly. With seven people and a dog on board it took a little while for the boat to rise onto the plane but once it did we were really flying. And things most certainly did come up quickly: channel markers that take forever to reach on Hawthorn flew past so fast that there was no need to think about where the next ones where and the speed was such that reading a map was out of the question: I simply lined up one set, then the next, and so on... Fortunately we have used this bit of water a couple of times so I was able to anticipate what was coming but vigilance was needed in watching out for small craft that might suffer in our wake. Traveling at such speed on water was a whole new experience to all of us and the noise and violence needed to reach, and maintain, such velocity was considerable.  The boat was amazing though: you could put it anywhere you wanted as long as you were going fast; once off the plane and dawdling, it wandered about constantly. We did not slow down much: once through the concrete bridge and past where Waterways Ireland were cutting the weed (a non indigenous variety that has been rampant in the shallow water of the Upper Lough this year and the subject of much moaning by local boaters). We arrived at Crom Castle in record time and spent a couple of hours wandering around the grounds before taking the boat round through Galloon and back to Crom - a twenty minute  journey that takes Hawthorn three hours!  The last run back to Knockninny was soon over and with a relieved Alfy clutching the Monterey’s keys, we all sat back with tea on Hawthorn to recover our poise. The consensus was that the speedboat was fun but everybody preferred to travel on Hawthorn (or, if you’re Matthew, in the dinghy). Hobbes was certainly unfazed by it - there is a video of the speedboat which finishes with him happily watching out the back, here . Not that we could afford such a toy, or to run it: the fuel bill for such a thirsty monster runs at twenty quid an hour!

We had a final day pottering about the Lower Lough: a trip to Naan Island nature reserve which is most notable for the vast and expensive jetty installed there by WI, and a run round to Tirraroe where we battled through the weed to get to the jetty. The highlight of Tirraroe was finding Connie, a harbour dog that spends its time between this jetty and Knockninny, in good health. This was the dog that walked miles with the Misfits last year when we made our way to the top of Knockninny Hill. We had put in at Knockninny on the way to meet the family and Connie had spent all day with us, and all night lying beside us.  We had even broken our no feeding harbour dogs rule as we knew she had not eaten.  That was a week previous and soon after we left she had gone missing, such a rare event that locals were concerned she had been taken away and ‘disposed of’.  She did look different and from a distance it was hard to be certain that is was Connie. The reason for this was evident when, having been called and run up to us, we realised that she had been shampooed!  Harbour dogs and shampoo! Whatever next?

 

Seeing Connie was a good high to finish the week on. Jill and I were keen that our visitors would leave with some understanding of the joys that have so entranced us since arriving here last May. The landscape, the people and the boating had all combined to make a week of highs. It may just be a coincidence but they had been home for only a few hours before my other sister was sending an email to try to arrange a visit for her own family - it would seem that our being here is a major plus for many people.   
I have added the photos to the previous article. And corrected the misnaming of Joe Treacy as the ‘man with the kettle’. It was, to quote Matt MacFarlane: ‘the wonderfully eccentric Joe McCool’.