New plan can deliver steady flow of tourists to the Shannon
THE Aboriginal people of Australia are divided into freshwater people and saltwater people and I’ve often thought that we carry out the same ritual here in Ireland. There are the coastal people who worship the sea with their swimming and surfing – they are the people who we see jumping into the Forty Foot in Dublin or out catching a wave in Sligo – but there is another water tribe: us freshwater mob.
We are the peoples of lakes and rivers. We fish, we sail, we relax on these great bodies of freshwater moving with the currents, flowing ever downstream to a new destination.
Many years ago my parents arranged such a freshwater journey for our then young family where we got the borrow of a friend’s barge and journeyed part of the great mother river of this island, the Shannon.
The Shannon is one of the earth’s great gifts to us in this nation. Running at some 360km, it divides the nation in two. It’s an old river, too, forming in the last glacial period and being recorded as early as the time of Ptolemy (2nd century AD), the great writer and thinker.
The river running from the Shannon Pot down to Limerick holds its own legends and tales and it is said that the goddess Sionann, a granddaughter of Lir, lent her name to the river after she was washed out to sea.
I did not know all these facts and histories when I was a young boy on that river; rather, I was a child who was falling in love with the water for the first time.
We set sail from Longford and journeyed down the great life force.
The barge, if memory serves, belonged to a family friend and after some short directions and piloting instructions was left in the power of my father after a few hours. He was, I should think, not much older than I am now.
The river was another world to me then, I had known only the Camlin – a tributary that feeds into the Shannon – and my knowledge of great waters was somewhat limited.
The Shannon had it all: there were birds such as swans and herons patrolling its waters, clouds of insects swarmed, butterflies climbed higher and higher, and in the water itself we trailed our fishing rods and attempted to catch pike and trout.
The river was a cosmopolitan place and one was as likely to meet a German or French tourist as you a famous face – my parish priest always recounts meeting Brian Friel on the banks of the Shannon in Leitrim.
In short, it was a new way of life and for those few days I shunned the way of the earth. I was a water baby and wanted only to stay in that world forever.
It was a trip – perhaps above all others around this great little island – that has profoundly shaped me. I’ve loved nature and water ever since and in a way the rivers are the last wildernesses left on this island.
They are the places where a heron can still be a heron, where a fish might never meet the hook of a rod, where nature flows in plenty.
The river is a natural wonder and it’s one that perhaps we don’t think of enough. That’s why it was with great delight I read of the Shannon Tourism Masterplan this week.
The new scheme could be a gamechanger for the counties the river flows through and the greater Shannon region.
The creation of Waterways Ireland, Fáilte Ireland and the various local authorities along the course, the plan is not just a half-hearted attempt to get more people on the water, as some €70m or so will be invested over a 10-year period.
The plan will see investment along the length of the river, from boardwalks to glamping. It has the far-thinking ideas and ideals of the Wild Atlantic Way and will provide a unique tourism experience for the users.
What is interesting about the plan is its inclusion of areas near the Shannon and the plan takes in a 10km corridor for consideration. This will allow smaller towns and villages along the route to exploit the spoils of the travellers.
The number of tourists in the Hidden Heartlands region of the country has been low and the Shannon Masterplan rightly admits that in its report, but that may be a unique aspect for this new proposal because it is a new world to be explored for users.
The number of potential visitors is big, in the hundreds of thousands, and the plan is to get travellers to stop on their way from Dublin to the west coast.
Unlike lands that have to be annoyingly driven through, the Shannon region will become a place to stop and discover, a hidden wonder.
A river doesn’t ask much of a person, it seeks to flow whether we are on it or not, and maybe that is why I think this initiative could be a winner.
Rather than hanging off a cliff or catching a wave, we can simply be on the water; instead of racing by this waterway in our cars, we can move at a different pace and take in life from the slow lane.
I’ve long wanted to journey the length of the Shannon again, to enjoy the wonder of it. If Covid lifts this summer, it is my hope to get on the river for a few days with friends.
It might be wishful thinking with the virus still at play, but perhaps some time in the water wilderness is the panacea that we all need.
We could all be Dick Warner for a few days and come back to the world remade as the freshwater people we were all supposed to be.
I was a water baby and wanted only to stay in that world forever