Cloncmanoise and The Shannon

Cloncmanoise, a 6th century monastic site a few miles upstream of ShannonBridge, seemed the ideal place to get ourselves back onto an even keel after the incident with the boulder and leaking stern tube that had somewhat marred our return run down the River Suck. There is a jetty mooring on the Shannon here that we  were able to squeeze onto amongst all the hired craft, and a short walk up the field is the visitor centre, bus and car parks that deliver the vast majority of tourists.  Cloncmanoise was trashed more than fifty times in its first thousand years: initially by the Vikings, then the Normans and finally the English until, in 1552, the site was abandoned. The good news about the loss of the village here is that there are no pubs or shops and, unless like us your motivation for being there is to indulge in the silence and peace of such a remote spot, everybody departs. This included the majority of the hire boats.  In the quiet of the evening we watched a spectacular sunset and enjoyed a huge flock of swallows as they coursed over the water for the last hour of light.  It is a difficult thing to find somewhere beyond earshot of human noise as we did that night. Peace.

Its not our dog!

Who Me?

Athlone itself was not much to write home about, so I won’t. But we did get a visit from the regional controller of Waterways Ireland who wanted to make sure that all was well with us and that the problems following the boulder strike were not going to cause us any further trouble. We briefly moored outside the oldest bar in Ireland - ‘Sean’s Place’ -  I did ask the obvious question of how many other oldest bars there are in Ireland and was told that this one is officially recognised as such. We then moved across the river to a quieter mooring as the original spot was used by the bars ‘smirkers’: so called because they go outside to smoke and flirt.  Not that we slept much better for being across the river: the Viking boat had returned and moored behind us: before leaving it for the night, the owner had used props to hold it off the bank. He had then placed strips of metal full of upturned nails on top of them to stop anyone boarding the boat. This took sometime and when I asked him if we could expect visitors and trouble, he thought long and hard and then said not as it was a Thursday. Not for us mooring in Athlone at the weekend. Even midweek is not much fun: such was the noise from the revelers I did not sleep until gone three. It did not matter: the following morning we were gone to the  vastness of Lough Ree; somewhere we would not have to concern ourselves with locking doors.

Boarders beware.