It’s a grand canal but hard to navigate

THE Royal Canal has recently been re-opened, after more than half a century of dereliction, for through travel from the Liffey to the north Shannon.

That, at least, is the theory. In practice, the newly re-opened navigation is experiencing some teething problems.

I know about this, because I am currently travelling it in a very large boat, called the Rambler, to make a new series of Waterways programmes for television. We are making progress, but this is due to the fact that we had the foresight to bring a chain saw for pruning over-hanging trees, and a hand winch to pull us over underwater obstacles. We also had an issue with an Irish Rail lifting-bridge that failed to lift. If you want the full details of our heroic battle against the obstacles, you’ll have to wait until the series is broadcast on RTÉ television at the end of the year.

In the meantime, I have to report that it has not been all hardship. The Royal is an incredibly beautiful canal that is blessed with a wealth of history and wildlife.

You leave the Liffey and potter past Croke Park and Mountjoy. Remarkably quickly, the city recedes and tree-lined banks lull you into thinking that you have reached rural Ireland. There is a rude awakening as you glide across an aqueduct that spans the Blanchardstown junction on the M50 — trains, planes and automobiles and the concrete jungle. Then, you’re back to willow trees and yellow, flowering flag irises with a water-hen swimming jerkily ahead of the boat.

Your sense of geography tells you that you are surrounded by the sprawling suburbs of west Dublin. But your eyes are telling you something different. The boat slips forward at less then walking pace and, ahead of it, the bank-side reeds bow to her great displacement. In the clear water, shoals of small fish swim energetically against the current caused by the water displaced by our massive hull. Two mallard ducks and a solitary swan are also swimming hard, trying to keep ahead of us.

Overhead are a dozen swallows giving master-classes in precision flying as they weave and dip and take floating insects off the water surface. A grey crow investigates a discarded bag of chips and a heron is patrolling the bank. I’ve noticed an interesting thing about the herons. If a heron is standing in the margins of the canal, waiting patiently for a roach to come within range of its stabbing beak, there is a certain distance at which an approaching boat will make it lose its nerve and take to the air. A woman pushing a buggy or a man walking his dog have the same effect.

But the distance from the perceived threat that makes the heron abort its fishing mission increases, metre by metre, as you leave Dublin. In Drumcondra, you can approach within about 10 metres of a fishing heron. In Blanchardstown, this increases to about 25 metres. Get out into rural Kildare and they are flushing at 100 metres. This seems to be an illustration of the fact, noted by several observers in several countries, that herons are becoming urbanised and losing their natural fear of humans.

This natural fear is justified. Up until a couple of hundred years ago, herons were hunted in this country and often sold for food in markets in country towns. Before this, they were also much-prized as a quarry by falconers. In the late Middle Ages, aerial duels between herons and peregrine falcons were regarded as one of the most exciting spectacles the sport could provide. When Shakespeare dismisses a man as being so stupid he can’t tell a hawk from a handsaw, he’s actually referring to a heronshaw — the old name for a heron.

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