Making a splash on the Shannon
We’re back to our native resources, our native resourcefulness too, our rivers still run free — and we still have the longest river in the islands of Ireland and Great Britain. Let’s celebrate the Shannon.
It has just been celebrated, in book form, by an ‘unlikely’ writer too. “Until I was asked to do a book on the Shannon, I’d only driven over it on bridges,” admits the suddenly-immersed scientist and zoologist, Aiveen Cooper.
More familiar with her native Liffey, this TCD graduate had written a scientifically-grounded article for the Heritage Council’s Outlook magazine on the Shannon in 2008: on its breadth of topics, from leisure use to Callow’s biodiversity, from flora to fauna, and from history to tourism and dolphin-watching, she was asked to consider a book on the river, all 370 kilometres of it.
In fairness, she was able for the challenge, if only by virtue of professional training and family background. She’d grown up kayaking on the Liffey, her boat-owning dad is a trained scuba diver, and her brother Eric Kemp owns and lives on a 1904 Dutch Skutsje Tjalke barge, called Niewe Zorgen — her chosen manner of transport, sorted.
Aiveen has charted the river’s course, from its rising in the so-called Shannon Pot in Cavan’s Cuilcagh Mountains, and then following the gentle stream/great river on its long journey through reeds, canals, locks, loughs, lakes and over 100km of tidal estuary to see it off safely to the sea. It’s a route it has followed for 10,000 years and the last glaciation period, and that’s a lot of water under the bridges.
Her Shannon passage, done in summer 2009, might have started as a challenge, but it ended as a labour of love: the same year involved Aiveen having a first baby, and doing a Master’s degree, so it can’t all have been plain sailing.
“There wasn’t much television watched that year,” Aiveen recalls (apologies to Outdoors neighbour Dick Warner, whose travels on the 1878-built 70’ boat the Rambler is currently airing on RTE on Waterways: the Royal Canal: we’ve the Shannon’s Nieuwe Zorgen from under him).
But, get on the water, get out, go! That’s Aiveen’s reaction to those who’ve only ever dipped a toe in this Great River, as expansive in its diversity as it is in its length and girth. You can start with an hour’s paid tourist trip in Athlone, on a Viking boat replica, or paddle your own canoe on the 20/30-minute crossing to monastic Holy Island in Scarriff Bay, stand at the foot of the Round Tower and the High Cross and feel the centuries peel back.
Greek cartographer Ptolemy mapped the then-known world almost two millennia ago, and marked the Shannon down as ‘Senos’, one of its many alliterative names referenced by Cooper in the just-published The River Shannon: a Journey Down Ireland’s Longest River (Collins Press.) There’s Sinann, a knowledge-hungry woman of Tuath de Danann pedigree, and more prosaically there’s Sean Abhann, or old river — and there’s Shannonland, a sort of state of mind Shannonsiders are prone to fall into.
The Shannon isn’t all deep, slow-flowing history either (fact: did you know it drains 20% of Ireland’s landmass, yet falls just 16 metres in 160km, or nearly half its length?). It has reflected all the ages it has passed through, from glaciation to electrification, with Ardnacrusha dam and power station tucked away in every former school-child’s mind as a nugget of learning.
De Valera (and every politician since) might have falsely promised to drain the Shannon, but at least a fledgling state managed to dam it — albeit initially to the detriment of migratory Atlantic salmon and European eels.
For hundreds of years the mighty Shannon cleaved the country, east and west; it has held key roles in religious domination, sackings and warmongering, transportation, tourism and cruiser holidays, and supports diverse wildlife and birdlife too — the Shannon Callows being of European significance, and Loop Head home to over 100 resident bottlenose dolphins. And, now Dublin wants to lay claim to its waters too.
The still-mooted plan to divert waters from the Shannon to slake the capital’s future thirst with 350 million litres a day diverted will remain controversial for a while yet. Cooper steers clear of the pending arguments, which will include references and appeals to the Shannon’s special EU designations under acryonyms like SACs, SAPs, NHAs and RBDs (River Basin Directives), but her riches-packed book The Shannon at least shows the many, many layered facets and eco-systems at stake.
*The River Shannon, A Journey Down Ireland’s Longest River is published this month by Collins Press.
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