A Week on the River Shannon, Ireland, August 2008

Start base: Carrick-on-Shannon, County Leitrim, Ireland
End base: Portumna, County Galway, Ireland
Craft: Lake Star, "Corry"

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Friday 22 August 2008

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For our last day, we didn't aim to do very much, so we initially had a little walk around Terryglass and visited the strange "St Augh's Eye Well" (known locally as Eyewell), supposed to have curative powers. There is another well, called Headache well.

Having planned to catch the Portumna swing bridge opening at 15:00, we decided not to venture too far. We had already bought a "return" ticket the previous day from the very friendly bridge keeper, since we had to come back through it! He had made a note of our boat name, and didn't need to request the return money.

There is no real easy way to pay the €1.50 to go through the bridge other than to throw the coins at the bridgemaster! Some of the moorings are "offshore", so impossible to walk to the boats to get the fee.

Kilgarvan Quay wasn't very far away downstream into Lough Derg, and after an hour we had arrived.


St Augh's Eye Well

 

Kilgarvan Quay is a funny little place, and only room for a couple of hire cruisers to moor. There are many small privately owned boats in the tiny, slightly run down, marina. We had a cup of coffee and walked to see the shop selling Antiques.

Just before midday, we started our cruise back towards Portumna. The guides indicated it was only about an hour to the swing bridge from Kilgarvan, so we had initially planned on stopping at Castle Harbour moorings.

However we were well short of the area after an hour. So we decided to moor at the swing bridge central moorings for lunch, and be ready for the 15:00 opening slot.

 


Corry at Portumna boat base

Within 5 minutes of the green traffic light, we had entered the Emerald Star boat base and moored next to the pump-out and refuelling station.

We used 75 litres of diesel on our trip of about 22 hours cruising. Along with about another 3 hours of engine use for various items such as using the engine to heat the water, small manoeuvres whilst circling etc, we had probably used 25 engine hours.

With a price of €1.15 per litre, it had cost us just over €86 for the week in fuel.

Clearly there was little use in having much left on board in the way of provisions, though we had made a snack ready for the trip home the next day. We decided to go into Portumna to eat. The main town is actually further away than we had thought and took ½ hour to walk into the centre.

 

We ate at "dyson's Restaurant". It was a little pricey, but as we had arrived in time for the early bird menu, we had a superb 3 course meal for €29.50 each, including a glass of wine.

Back on board the boat at 21:00, we settled for an early night moored at the boat base.

Portumna Sat Nav position
N 53 05' 34"
W 08 11' 54"

 

 
Terryglass -> Kilgarvan Quay. Cruising time : ½ hour
Kilgarvan Quay -> Portumna swing bridge. Cruising time : 1½ hours
Portumna swing bridge -> Portumna boat base. Cruising time : 5 minutes (1 swing bridge)
 

 
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Friday 22 August 2008

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