From bjg@wordwrights.ie Sat May 15 11:58:12 1999
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 00:32:46 GMT
From: Brian J Goggin <bjg@wordwrights.ie>
Reply-To: canals@blacksheep.org
To: canals@blacksheep.org
Subject: Trip report: Irish Grand Canal Part 5 (long)

The third part of our trip on the Irish Grand Canal began on Saturday
1 May, the first day of the May Bank Holiday weekend. Our boat was at
Lowtown, near the summit level of the Grand Canal, where the Barrow
Line branches off to join the River Barrow; we hoped to take the
Barrow Line as far as Vicarstown, where there was to be a canal
festival on the Sunday.

For various reasons, we didn't get away from Limerick until Saturday
afternoon. Ian (10) had a soccer match at 11.00am; Anne wanted to go
shopping; I had to find a low-voltage pump and a low-voltage lighting
system for the garden (which took me about three hours to find). It
wasn't until 2.00pm that we left home; then we had to stop in Nenagh
to buy cheese from Country Choice, Ireland's best cheese-shop.

We were in two cars. We drove first to Vicarstown and left Anne's car
there; then we all (including Goldie, the Hairy POSSLQ) got into my
car for the trip to Lowtown. Anne navigated, taking a shorter route
than the one I had selected; geography degrees have their uses. We got
to Lowtown by about 5.00pm and had loaded the boat, parked the car and
pushed off by 5.30pm.

It was getting a bit late, but we were anxious to get some of the way
towards Vicarstown that night. We didn't know how far we could get,
though: for one thing, there were only two adults and one ten-year-old
(Carolan, 14, was away at school), which meant that Ian would have to
take either the bow or the stern rope in locks. He was a bit nervous
about it --- and, to tell the truth, so was I. Still, we'd be
descending all the way to Athy, where the canal joins the river ---
and we weren't going as far as Athy on this trip.

The boatyard at Lowtown is on a long triangular island. The Old Barrow
Line forms one side of the island; the New Barrow Line forms the
other, which was the nearer to us. There is a footbridge across the
entrance to the New Barrow Line; a board attached to the bridge bears
the names of the far-distant ports that lie along the line. Ian wrote
them down as we turned right and passed under the bridge:

Rathangan 8 miles
Monasterevan 14 miles
Athy 28 miles
Carlow 40 miles
Graiguenamanagh 66 miles
St Mullins 70 miles

Ah, the romance of those distant destinations: Chimborazo and Cotopaxi
had nothing on them.

The triangular island is almost two miles long, with two locks just
beyond the point where the Old and New Barrow Lines meet. At first,
both sides of the cut were lined with boats: boats of all sorts.
Further along, it became clear that the cut was on an embankment: we
looked down into people's back gardens to our left and into fields to
our right. The water was clear, but the further we got from Lowtown
the less clear it became.

Past the island, we could see the huge holes in the Hill of Allen,
holes dug out by quarrying into one of the former homes of the
legendary Fionn MacCumhail. Then, eventually, we were able to see the
Old Barrow Line with the occasional boat on it, and at last the two
lines merged.

We passed under a narrow bridge with a small castle near it; there was
also a GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) club, with political
activists outside it putting up posters for the forthcoming local and
European elections. Then we came to the 20th lock, the first of two
adjacent locks. (The numbering is from Dublin, so the 19 locks on the
Main Line from Dublin to Lowtown precede the Barrow Line locks.)

I made a daring leap to shore (when you're my size anything at all
energetic is daring) and we tied the boat termporarily while we
investigated. The fall is only 6' 3", with 7' 0" at the 21st lock.

>From a house just by the lock, two women and a large number of small
children emerged. Some of the children were visiting the others; they
were excited at the prospect of seeing a boat go through the lock. As
soon as we began to let water into the chamber, the lockkeeper emerged
from the second house near the lock. He told us that there had been
quite a lot of traffic that day: already four boats had gone down, two
of them going to the Vicarstown event. However, he felt that we had no
hope of getting to Vicarstown the next day: that it was too far to
travel. This was rather depressing, but we decided to press on.

Ian managed well at that lock, and we set off for the next, just a
couple of hundred yards away. We slowed down to let the keeper get
ahead of us. A group of boys, swimming below the lock, got out to
allow the lock to be operated; we got through successfully, with the
keeper, originally reticent, becoming more voluble as time went on.

>From 21st lock we had an uneventful trip through fairly open
countryside to 22nd lock at Glenaree Bridge. There we found Lynda,
from whom we had bought our boat, moored for the night on her new
boat. She and Frank helped us through, but the 10' fall meant that I
had to run (well, stagger) down past the bridge to the bank below the
lock where I was able to clamber back on board as we passed a number
of hire-boats moored to the bank.

After that, we were within about two and a half miles of Rathangan, so
we decided to head down there for the night. On the way, as we were
about to pass between some forestry plantations, we met the theatre
barge *Enterprise*, whom we had met at Sallins; they had been
performing at Rathangan and were on their way back to Lowtown in the
dusk. They gave us a very wide berth --- too wide, alas, because they
seemed to run aground. Perhaps our conversation had distracted them.
We decided to turn and go back to help them, but just as we got the
nose in to the back they got clear and headed off. We resumed our
course, noting that it was easy enough to turn a 36' boat on the
canal.

It was getting dark as we came into Rathangan. The canal skirts one
side of the village, with the road to Monasterevan alongside. Above
the bridge there are old warehouses to the right; there two small
boats there, with two people whom we greeted. Below the bridge there
was a wide-beam barge, one of the boats that various small companies
hire out along the Barrow Line and the river itself. It had a crew
aboard and was tied to the bollards on the right, but there were
cider-drinking youths at a picnic table nearby so we carried on a
little further, mooring at a set of wooden bollards (the usual black
with white on top) half way between the bridge and the lock that we
would have to negotiate the next morning. Actually, that's probably
unfair to the youths: although we could hear them talking until late
at night, they created no disturbance; our only complaint would have
been that they didn't tidy up after themselves. And we had a quiet
stretch of canal bank to ourselves for a peaceful night.

We ate some potatoes with cold chicken, ham and salad vegetables, and
then read for a while before going to bed. The new battery that Eddie
Brunker had installed for us was giving us more light than we'd ever
had before; it was evident that our battery problems were of long
standing.

The next morning, we were up before 9.00am (most unusual for me,
though not for Anne and Ian): the combination of sunlight and birdsong
made it impossible to stay in bed. I walked down to the 23rd lock, a
double with a combined 17' 2" fall. The keeper was said to live by the
lock, and I hoped that my mucking about with gates and racks, and my
being greeted by, and calming, three barking dogs, would wake him up
and cause him to leap to our assistance. Alas, I hoped in vain: it was
evident that we would have to work this one by ourselves.

More experienced canal-goers may scoff, but I sat down and worked out
the sequence of operations in my mind: none of my books described the
operation of a double, and I wanted to be sure that I got it right.
Even then, it came as a surprise to me, during the operation, that the
boat did not descend, during the first stage, as far as I had expected
when I saw the chambers empty.

Nonetheless, the operation went well. We hauled the boat into the top
chamber; then Anne took the stern rope and Ian the bow while I
operated the gates and the racks. Anne hauled in her rope and went
forward to the wheel; by the time she got there, Ian had his rope in,
having got the hang of keeping it short. They drove into the lower
chamber; I took the ropes and passed them back on board before letting
the water out. On opening the lower gates, I noticed that the beams
swung back into niches in the stonework of the bridge (Spencer Bridge)
that is built just below the lower chamber, using the walls for
support. I just managed to leap back on board while the boat was in
the chamber, leaving the lock as we had found it.

We put on a second pot of coffee while we headed south from Rathangan
on the six- or seven-mile stretch to Monasterevan. There was lots of
bird life; herons in particular were common, often flying a hundred
yards ahead as they saw us coming, then settling --- and having to
disturb themselves again as we continued towards them.

24th lock at Macartney Bridge is another double (12' 10" in total),
situated at a tiny hamlet with thatched cottages and other scenic
features. This time, the double held no terrors for us. Just as the
boat went down in the lower chamber, the keeper returned on his
motorbike, presumably from Mass, in time to close the lower gates
after us. He checked that we were heading south through Monasterevan;
he was able to ensure that preparations were made for our arrival.

And preparations are necessary, because Monasterevan is one of the
most interesting towns on the Irish canals. Interesting, that is, if
you're on the canal. If you're on the main road, the N7/N8 south from
Dublin to Limerick and Cork, you probably see Monasterevan as a
potential traffic jam, somewhere that needs to be bypassed soon. As
you pass the walls of Moore Abbey, you may recall that the tenor John
McCormack lived there; you may even be aware that Gerald Manley
Hopkins had some connection with the town, which holds an annual
literary festival in his honour; you may, as you pass the long stone
walls of the former Cassidy's Distillery on the left and the fast-food
shops on the right, recall that the kidnapped Dr Tiede Herrema was
held here by a terrorist gand and released after a long siege in 1975.
But, as you pass the pedestrian crossing and accelerate over the
Barrow, then slow for the double bend and accelerate out of the town
as you cross the canal, you may not realise that you have missed all
the most interesting aspects of the town.

Coming in by canal, you pass under a railway bridge. It's the main
railway line from Dublin to Cork, Limerick and Kerry. On your left,
you pass a set of bollards where a boat may tie up. It was at this
point that *Saoirse ar an Uisce* (*Freedom on the Water*) had her
official launch in 1998. She is a barge specially built (by MPC Boats
in Newbridge) for the Sisters of Charity who now occupy Moore Abbey
and, there and elsewhere in the midlands, provide facilities for
people with learning difficulties. *Saoirse ar an Uisce* was funded
under the EU Horizon programme as a training facility for such people:
they are to learn waterways-related skills that may provide them with
employment along the waterways. The skipper is Mark Maguire ("young
Mark"), who has been afloat more or less since birth; the boat travels
all along the canals and we were to meet her at Vicarstown.

On the right, the railway curves around leftwards to parallel the
canal, passing behind a series of deserted warehouses and
canal-related houses. Just along here was where Eric Tymon, Grand Old
Man and Poet of the Waterways, found one night that the Little People
had turned the canal around in the night.

Then the canal suddenly takes a 45-degree turn to the right --- and
there is a single-carriageway bascule lifting bridge over the canal.
The 24th lock keeper had been true to his word: there he was, with the
keeper from 25th lock, one of them holding up the traffic and the
other lifting the bridge, as a large proportion of the population of
Monasterevan paused to watch the "yacht" (as pleasure-boats on the
canals used to be called in the trading days) going through. The
bridge wasn't quite up when we got there, but it was almost ready ---
which was slightly disappointing, as we would have liked to get off
and watch ourselves! But we couldn't disappoint our audience. We
simply did a bit of backing and filling until the bridge was raised
and the holding-pins were in, then moved cautiously forward. We were
tempted to bow right and left, but we immediately found ourselves on a
narrow aqueduct and we couldn't let the side down by hitting anything,
so we had to keep our attention on the matter in hand, merely thanking
the keepers for letting us through. Note that you're not allowed to
operate this bridge yourself: you must get one of the keepers to do
it.

So there we were on an aqueduct (three 40-foot spans, the Guide tells
me), crossing the Barrow: the very river that we would be joining at
Athy. To our right, the railway crossed the river; to our left, the
main road did the same; in the middle, the canal held centre stage.

It may be that the water in aqueducts is warmer than the water
elsewhere along canals. On the Main Line, we had seen people swimming
at the Leinster Aqueduct; here in Monasterevan, my father often
brought us to swim when we were visiting my grandparents who lived on
the Curragh in Co Kildare (the county in which Monasterevan is). That
was in the days before leptospirosis was invented --- and the water is
still very clean.

At one time, it was intended that the canal should join the Barrow at
this point. Even after that idea was dropped, the boats at first
locked down into the Barrow and up the other side --- and that's the
explanation of that 45-degree turn just before the bridge: the
original route ran straight on, and traces of the original works can
still be seen.

But the interest of Monasterevan is not yet done with. When you get
across the aqueduct, the canal turns left again. But ahead, there lie
the remains of another branch line, the now-derelict line to
Mountmellick, a town with strong Quaker connections. It was when that
line was built in the 1820s that the locking-down-and-back-up-again
arrangement was discontinued. Now, alas, the 11-mile branch is
unlikely ever to be restored; the section through Portarlington (a
town with strong Hugeunot connections) has been filled in.

But we followed the Barrow Line round to the left, to the 25th lock.
The keeper operated it for us while we tried to fill with water fromt
he tap above the lock: its quality had been recommended to us, but
alas it was not designed to have hoses fitted to it and filling was
slow. Eventually we gave up, went through the lock and pulled in at
the little cut below the lock --- a cut that, from its orientation,
may have been part of the original line of the canal, locking up from
the Barrow. There was one other boat tied there in the little harbour;
it looked like a permanent resident --- and one of no more than seven
or eight boats we had seen since leaving Lowtown.

We had promised Ian an ice-cream, but we found that we were some
distance by land from the town and the shops. Nothing daunted, Anne
and Ian set off on our two bikes, while Goldie sniffed about the area
and I continued the cleaning-and-waxing that Anne had begun on our
journey to Monasterevan. Soon, though, the wax got into the cuts on my
hands and I stopped to clean up. Anne and Ian soon came back with
ice-creams and Sunday newspapers but, alas, no cider, and we set off
again. There was a thirteen-mile level to the 26th lock, near Athy,
but we were not going that far.

We now had to pass under the N7/N8: quite a wide bridge, from our
viewpoint, with a rectangular hole and a lowish ceiling: any lower and
we'd have had to take the bikes off the roof. Just beyond the bridge
the banks had undergone earthworks for some reason, and then we swung
right, parallel to both the N7/N8 and the Barrow and about halfway
between them. We couldn't actually see the river, but we could see the
road --- and we realised that we had driven along that stretch
hundreds of times without realising that the canal was in sight behind
the few houses along the way. From the road, the canal, embanked,
looked just like a bank of earth; we had never seen a boat moving on
it. But now, how much more pleasant it was to be pottering along the
canal, in the sunlight, than to be zooming along the road.

At a corner, a lane from the main road came down to the canal; a pair
of English fishermen were packing up and returning to their car and
waved cheerfully as we passed. We went under a pleasant footbridge and
along an embankment to Fisherstown Bridge, then through a cutting,
with trees pressing in on us in places, to Courtwood Bridge. Finally,
after just over two miles more, we came in to Vicarstown.

When we got there, I began to sympathise with Eric Tymon. To me, too,
it seemed that the canal had been turned around: what I had assumed to
be the "downhill" side of Vicarstown turned out to be the "uphill"
side, the one from which we approached.

There were quite a few boats there: mostly privately owned, although
the barge from Rathangan came in later. (It had its throttle mounted
on its tiller.) It was early afternoon when we arrived, so when we had
eaten we set off to see what was going on at the festival.

The first event was to be the welly-throwing competition. I was the
first to try that and found it surprisingly difficult, but my throws
held the record for quite a while. There was a demonstration of
basket-weaving and there were various children's activities, but alas
none of them appealed to Ian, and the canal had too much floating weed
to make it safe for his radio-controlled boat. In consequence, he
found Vicarstown rather boring, but we were able to chat to various
boat-owners and would-be boat-owners, including Arthur Kepple,
Chairman of IWAI's Barrow Branch, who promised to help us to get down
the river safely. (The number of possible problems is quite large;
I'll cover them in a later report.) A children's open-air disco went
on until 11.00pm, but Ian did manage to get to sleep before then.

On Monday morning we took Anne's car back to Lowtown to retrieve my
car. A wrong turning on the way back deprived us of the opportunity to
visit Father Moore's Well (I haven't visited a Holy Well for years; I
wondered whether people still took them seriously) but we got petrol
and ice-creams in Newbridge before returning through Kildare and
Monasterevan to Vicarstown.

We packed up and went to one of the two pubs that constitute the
centre of Vicarstown, one on each side of the canal. Alas, they did
not serve food, but they promised to keep an eye on our boat, so we
set off, at 1.00pm, for Stradbally, a nearby small town that was
running steam-train rides that afternoon. There is a small
narrow-gauge line running through a wood on the edge of a large
estate; I saw one steam engine with two carriages (one of which
included the guard and his brake), as well as three other small
engines, which may have been diesels. We arrived far too early: the
rides were to start at 2.30pm and the volunteer staff were still
having their lunch. But they said that so many people had arrived that
they would start early, so I went off to find some sandwiches (and
chips for Ian) while Anne, Ian and Goldie waited for the train. When I
got back, they had already had one trip. but your ticket allowed you
to stay on as long as you liked, so I joined Ian for his second trip,
giving him the chips I had bought and giving Anne her sandwich. We sat
in the guard's van and chatted to him about the line, which was built
specially by the enthusiasts of the Steam Preservation Society; we
were impressed to find that whistles and flag signals were used: all
proper order.

After that trip, Ian decided to go around again, by himself. Then
another of the volunteers arrived; Anne found that she knew him as the
brother of one of her old teachers (who is now teaching Carolan). The
result was that Ian was invited to take a trip in the driver's cab,
something that pleased him mightily; he found that driver and fireman
were busy the whole time and that it was very hot. I was able to buy a
secondhand copy of *The Canals of the North of Ireland* from the
bookstall (I didn't have that book) as well as badges for my current
car and the car I'll buy if I win the lottery. ("Meet me halfway: buy
a ticket.")

After that, we set off for home, passing the impressive Rock of
Dunamase on our way into Portlaoise and then taking the familiar N7
back to Limerick.

Our next proper trip will probably take us on to the river itself, but
we may have a weekend on the boat without going anywhere very much.
And we're also going to visit Carolan in Waterford and take her to
lunch on the New Ross Galley, a cruising restaurant, which will be
travelling up the River Nore, so we'll get a preview of some of the
waters we hope to visit ourselves later on.

bjg