Saturday 30th May
I have enjoyed writing today's post though what I have
learnt is rather depressing.
We woke up to rain and it rained on and off all day :-(
We are heading to Shannon Harbour tomorrow to meet up with
old boating friends, Dot and Gordon, who used to have a narrow boat, but bought
a Dutch barge in 2019 and spent time in the UK renovating it before bringing it
over to Ireland in 2023. We are really
looking forward to seeing them again.
The big question of the day was, do we move today or
tomorrow!
As this weekend was a Bank
Holiday we were concerned about places to stop.
When we arrived in Shannonbridge on Thursday there were three of us and
Friday night there were 12 of us and no one moved today. Our dilemma was, do we
risk leaving Shannonbridge and driving to Shannon Harbour and finding there was
no parking, then returning to Shannonbridge and our parking spot had been
taken!
In the end we stayed put.
I took the opportunity to sort out what we were going to do
after we finish the WAW in Kinsale.
We
now have a rough idea of where we are going and what we are going to do.
I took Rio for a lovely walk along the river. We hadn’t
realised it was a path until I saw another dog walker going along it. The grass
was long and wet and Rio had to keep jumping up to see where he was!
There were at least two lots of zoomies!
We were both very wet when we got back.
In Shannonbridge there used to
be a peat-fired power station which opened in
1965.
Jem makes it sound so lovely!
"For generations, the hum of the station
and the sight of narrow-gauge turf trains crossing the iron railway bridge
dominated local life and employment."!
However, in line with modern environmental policy, the historic peat
station officially closed its doors in 2020, marking the end of a major
industrial chapatichapter.
The building
is now used as an emergency back up plantt. The plant is completely isolated
from the open commercial electricity marketplace. It only runs if the grid
operator specifically commands it during an absolute emergency. It is legally
capped at running a maximum of 500 hours per year.
The full facility became available for
emergency dispatch in early 2025. It is scheduled to remain in place as a
safety net until the end of the 2026–2027 winter season (with potential
legislative extensions to 2028), after which the temporary turbines will be
completely dismantled and removed.
In
short, the Shannonbridge site has evolved from a traditional fossil-fuel burner
into a crucial technical anchor for Ireland's renewable energy transition,
keeping the lights on quietly in the background without constantly blowing
smoke.
We have seen a lot of peat digging which has perturbed me
somewhat. My research shows that if you
are an individual digging peat strictly to heat your own home, it is generally
legal, provided you hold the traditional legal right to do so and the bog is
not environmentally protected. Rural
households in Ireland often hold traditional land rights called "turbary
rights." These rights allow the holder to cut, dry, and remove turf from a
specific plot of bogland for family use.
However, it is a criminal offence to cut turf on bogs designated as
Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) or Natural Heritage Areas (NHAs). The
state-owned peat company, Bord na Móna, officially ended all commercial peat
harvesting in 2021 following EU climate directives.
While the UK and Ireland are swiftly moving away from
extraction, global peat digging is a massive, multi-billion-dollar industry.
Globally, about 20 million metric tons of peat are mined annually.
The main "culprits" are, Finland,
Canada, Latvia, Belarus, Sweden, Germany, Russia and Estonia in that
order.
If you looked at this list a
decade ago, Ireland would have been firmly in the top three, extraction-wise.
However, following the complete cessation of industrial harvesting by Bord na
Móna and the closure of legacy peat-fired power stations, Ireland has
officially dropped out of the ranks of major legal producers. Similarly,
the United Kingdom is tracking toward an outright ban on the sale of
horticultural peat products, forcing a rapid market transition to sustainable
alternatives.
Peat extraction is a primary target in global climate
discussions. Degraded and drained peat bogs emit roughly 2 billion tonnes of
carbon dioxide annually—accounting for roughly 4% of all human-caused global
emissions.
Richard asked where does all this fit with cutting down the
rain forests.
If a rainforest is
cleared, a tree can grow back and store a significant amount of carbon within
50 to 100 years. It is a fast, highly active biological cycle, whereas peat
accumulates at an agonizingly slow rate of just 1 millimeter per year. A peat
bog that is 3 meters deep took 3,000 years to form. Once you dig it up, it is
gone on any human time scale; it is functionally a fossil fuel.
Time to Form
Rainforest - 100–500 years
Peat bog - 1,000–10,000+ years
Sunday 31st May
The music at Lukers Bar didn’t stop until 1.30am and then we
both lay there wondering if it was going to start up again. Neither of us got
much sleep.
No lie in for us though as we had arranged to meet Dot about
10.30am. It was only an 8 mile journey. When we arrived in Shannon Harbour
there was no parking where I had hoped to park so we drove on about 100 yards
and found a lovely spot with two other motorhomes.
Dot came over and we took Rio for a walk along the Grand
Canal. It was then onto the Fleur de Lys for coffee and to catch up with Gordon
who was battling with a bathroom renovation.
We have known Dot and Gordon for 10 years since we met on our narrow
boats in Bristol. We used to catch up with each other from time to time and
also in Mojacar, where half a dozen or so of boaters would go in the
winter. D & G sold their narrow boat
in 2019 and bought a Dutch Barge, the Fleur de Lys, bringing her to Ireland in
2023.
We went back to Kiwi for a couple of hours then met up with
D & G again in the local pub, a 5 minute walk away. It was a traditional
Irish pub, small with a low ceiling. It was very much a locals pub but with it
being a holiday there were a lot of “plastic paddies”! I had a pint and half of Guinness, well I had
to didn’t I!! The food was basic but
very well cooked and enjoyable.
It had been lovely meeting D & G again and hopefully our
paths will cross again someday.
Shannon Harbour is a remarkably intact piece of Ireland’s
industrial heritage. It didn’t evolve naturally over centuries; it was a
purpose-built frontier town constructed at the turn of the 19th century to
solve a massive engineering puzzle: connecting Dublin to the Atlantic Ocean via
the Grand Canal and the River Shannon.
For roughly fifty years, (1805 - 1850), Shannon Harbour was
a vital, booming transshipment hub. Because canal barges couldn't easily handle
the heavy currents and winds of the broad River Shannon, and large river
steamers couldn't fit into the narrow canal locks, everything had to be
unloaded and reloaded here. At its peak,
the harbor saw up to 250,000 passengers pass through annually, alongside
thousands of tons of turf, grain, flour, Guinness, and livestock. The Grand Canal Hotel opened in 1806, this imposing,
three-story stone hotel was built to accommodate wealthy travelers transferring
between the flyboats (fast, horse-drawn passenger boats) and river steamers.
During the Great Famine (1845–1852), the harbour quickly
turned from a trade hub into a bleak point of departure. For thousands of
people from Offaly and Galway, Shannon Harbour was the starting point of their
emigration journey, taking flyboats from Dublin before boarding "coffin
ships" to America.
By the late 1850s, passenger traffic had completely dried
up. The grand hotel closed its doors and was later converted into a barracks
for the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) before eventually falling into the ruin
you can see today.
Today Shannon Harbour has facilities for boaters including
two historic dry docks. There is also
the The Harbour Master’s House, an historically listed 1806 building which has
been beautifully restored, and now operates as a highly-rated 4-star boutique
Bed & Breakfast.
The What3Words for Sunday were
https://w3w.co/commanded.earning.vented
Monday June 1st
We both slept like babies after three disturbed nights at
Shannonbridge, but we did wake up to rain.
Our peregrination (look it up!) to the River Shannon had
come to an end, and it was time to head back to the WAW. As we approached Portumna we were held up by
a swing bridge over the River Shannon. It dates back to 1911 and features a
specialized, asymmetric swing span on the Galway side. The bridge is too low for boats to go under
so it is swung at set times during the day.
We picked up the WAW again and followed it round to Doolin.
The weather was grey and drizzly and the scenery was pretty bleak. There was no
parking, not even for cars, on the first part of the WAW but 6 miles from the
site we were able to pull in and walk onto the amazing rock formation. I’ve
never seen anything like it. Obviously,
the coaches all go from south to north whereas we were going north to south.
The road was pretty narrow and the coach drivers all expected us to get off the
road so they could get passed. We were
very lucky as we didn’t have to reverse once. We could usually see the coaches
coming so in the end we would pull over and wait for them.
There are two sites in Doolin, one in the town and one by
the harbour. Being us, we chose the watery one!
When we arrived, I got rather excited as they had big bins so we could
finally dump the rubbish which had been in the garage for a few days - thank
goodness it hadn’t been hot! The site is
very well organised with excellent
pitches with electricity and water. We
chose a pitch with a nice view over the harbour. I did two loads of laundry but it was
expensive - €24.
The area we were in is known as The Burren (a National Park)
which is a huge area known for its unusual, moon-like landscape. The name comes
from an Irish word meaning "a rocky place," which is exactly what it
looks like. Even though it looks like a
desert, it is actually full of life. The deep cracks in the rock stay warm and
damp, acting like tiny greenhouses where rare, colourful flowers from all over
the world grow side-by-side.
The bedrock is pale, Carboniferous limestone (roughly 350
million years old). The lone boulders resting on top are dark, ancient Galway
Granite (closer to 400+ million years old).
During the peak of the last glaciation, a massive ice sheet over 500
meters thick tore these granite blocks straight out of the Connemara mountains
on the north side of Galway Bay, dragged them 20 miles south, and dumped them
gently onto the Murrooghtoohy shelves as the ice melted.
The What3words for Monday were
https://w3w.co/works.describe.mister
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