Dropping down lock 20 we entered an 18 mile lock free stretch of water that extended nearly as far as Tullamore, Offaly's county town. Tullamore would wait for a few more days though as we had decided to go only the few miles to Edenderry, a substantial town that was connected to the main line of the Grand Canal by its own side branch.
The canal here is raised on huge embankments which, although not particularly high, have a base more than eight times the width of the canal that they carry. This was the only way that the constructors could stop the canal constantly breaching as the land beneath dried out and moved as it was drained for the canal's construction - near Edenderry the bog sank 43 ft from it's original level within just a few years of the canal's opening - and this stretch still proves to be the achilles heel of the navigation and has suffered bad breaches as recently as 1989. Had we actually made it to Ireland last year as planned we might have seen the digger that WI had ready on the bank in readiness for a controlled breach should the high levels caused by the incessant rain threaten to collapse the banks; despite every paddle on every lock from here to the Shannon having been raised to run the water off. The first thing that we noticed as we left the lock that morning was that the colour of the water had changed. No longer was it gin clear, neither was it peaty - the water of the bog is far below the level of the canal - instead the canal has the colour of the clay that was transported miles in order to make a watertight channel on top of the embankment. The canal is also very straight as befits a man made channel across a flat landscape.
We had thought that this part of the Grand Canal might be rather dull, but that was far from the case. It is remote, almost otherworldly, and there were very few dwellings amongst the scrub. This scrub is an ideal habitat for wildlife and, with our engine gently ticking along we could hear the birds chattering away to each other. We had already noticed that there is a lot more birdsong in Ireland than in England but rarely had it been louder than here. The scrub does give way in the distance to barren areas where industrial peat cutting has temporarily transformed the landscape and, more distant still, we could see the towers of a peat burning power station. The peat is force dried and shredded to dust before being blown under pressure into the furnaces. We also saw our first Kingfishers: a pair that worked their way ahead of us. We are used to kingfishers in England where they generally keep ahead of the boat until they come to the edge of their territory when they double back and flash past in a a blaze of colour, Not this pair, they kept ahead of us for a couple of miles and then sat, statuesque, on a branch as we passed them. Jill managed to take a picture of one of them but, used to the timid practice of these birds in England, she took it over the boat so the bird is rather small in the picture. No need, Irish Kingfishers are made of sterner stuff and the bird did not move as we passed it a few feet away with the wheelhouse door wide open. A magical moment in what was proving to be a fine day.
The confident Kingfisher 
We had been advised to moor behind another barge just outside Edenderry harbour . This is close enough to the town for shopping but not so close that you have your boat climbed over by kids in the evening and drunkards after the pubs chuck out. After a walk round town and a visit to Lidl, we had not long returned when the owner of the barge, who lived in a house overlooking the canal, appeared. Again, we were to be offered a lift to the supermarket, power, water, pretty much anything that our heart's desired. We are simply not used to this level of generosity and had already got the provisions we needed but were once again touched by the willingness of perfect strangers to assist us. In part this might be down to the fact that we have an unusual boat and are clearly 'foreign', although that might well have the opposite affect in England. It would be a fine thing to learn to greet and befriend complete strangers in such a warm and genuine fashion; I am sure that we will should we stay long enough.
The following morning we left after a final trip to the shops. We still had 12 miles of bog ahead of us and the weather was holding. The canal was pretty shallow so we made slow progress, which was a blessing as it gave us time to enjoy the landscape. The scrubland was now broken by the occasional meadow where small herds of cattle could be seen amongst the wildflower soaked waist high grass. There were very few road bridges and one most unusual railway bridge: a narrow gauge line that ran from the peat cuttings to the power stations, manned, inevitably, by a single Eastern European. The bridge is probably only raised about twice a day and its position in the middle of nowhere in this unusual landscape made it feel that it belonged on some Russian Steppe. Manning it must have been deadly dull and is probably a job for a reader. The area around the bridge was devoid of trees or even scrub, just miles of brown soil exposed by the huge peat cutting machines we could see across the flat landscape. For some reason I kept striking the bridges when steering Hawthorn and Jill had to take over as she could get through much better - I will put this down to my loss of spacial awareness in this surreal place. We moored for the night at Daingean, a village at the western edge of the bog and a couple of miles before the descent down the locks that would take us to the metropolis of Tullamore.
One of many ruined castles  |
Hawthorn Blog 
