Craic on the Shannon – and oh what a view!
Niamh Griffin takes a motorboat trip and falls for it hook, line and sinker
It’s a rare holiday where you are given a boat worth €250,000 and are allowed to take it away, armed with directions to the best pubs along the route – but that’s just part of what a motorboat trip along the Shannon offers.
A number of companies operate along the Shannon and, in the Boyle river district, the green and white of Emerald Star boats putter lazily along.
Despite their size, the boats don’t go that fast, so anyone who understands the difference between reverse and forward can make a reasonable go of it, with the main attraction for older sailors being the stunning scenery.
Four of us took the 39ft boat from Leitrim’s Carrick-onShannon in a meandering line to the shelter of Lough Key. A 10-minute drive by car, we spent half a day puttering past swans and passing under stone bridges which have seen boat travel for centuries.
Two of our intrepid sailors, including this writer, were absolute novices, and were convinced the Caprice would race away into the banks in no time. But unlike learning to drive a car, which can be fairly hairy for everyone concerned, the motorboats respond slowly and gently to pressure and give you plenty of warning of where they’re about to go.
This means two people could easily manage even the larger Horizon boat. And, for family fun, the boats come with child-size lifejackets – future mariners could certainly learn a lot, especially when directing a boat through locks under the watchful eye of Waterways Ireland staff.
It also helps that the Shannon is pretty wide, so you’d have to be really determined to ram the banks for anything too major to go wrong. Or so they told us anyhow.
And the swans are smart – they know when a beginner mariner is bearing down on them and flap lazily out of the way. So on we motored to the deceptive calm of Lough Key.
Lounging around on the boat as twilight settled in, all you can hear are birds and the water lapping against the moorings.
We had no idea a large campsite was nearby, packed with families, many of whom return to this area summer after summer. The main draw is the Lough Key Activity Centre but it’s possible to spend time by the river and walking in the Coillte-run forest without ever breaking a sweat.
Or you could cheat like we did and take a Woodland Segway Ireland tour through the forests and grounds of Rockingham House. Requiring even less effort than the boats to steer – and costing a lot less – the tour is led by a former bio-chemist who decided the outdoors life was for him.
Gliding through the 200-yearold wood, we saw huge cedar trees, rarely grown in this part of the world, and always with tantalising glimpses of the water off to the side.
If you go on a rainy day, the centre is home to one of the few Boda
‘Anyone who knows the difference between reverse and forward can make a reasonable go of it’