Dorp · Co. Limerick
Adare
The heritage village on the tidal River Maigue, southwest of Limerick city — “the ford of the oak”, a medieval market town with three monasteries, and the Desmond castle that watched the crossing.
The town
Foynes (Faing in Irish) is a town and a major port in County Limerick, on the southern bank of the Shannon Estuary, at the edge of the hilly land that looks out over the water. Its population at the 2022 census was 512, which makes it a small town in the proper sense — and the size is the point. This is the place where the ocean came to the estuary, and the estuary came to the town. The harbour, the water, and the history of the crossing are all inside the same short walk.
The crossing
The town’s story is the story of the Atlantic. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, land-based planes could not yet cross the ocean, and flying boats were the way, with Foynes as the last port of call on the eastern shore. Charles Lindbergh made the survey flights for the flying-boat operations in 1933, the terminal was begun in 1935, and on 5 July 1937 the first transatlantic proving flights ran — a Pan Am Sikorsky S-42 from Botwood in Newfoundland and a BOAC Short Empire from Foynes, with successful transits of twelve and fifteen-and-a-quarter hours. Services to New York, Southampton, Montreal, Poole and Lisbon followed, and the first non-stop New York service ran on 22 June 1942, in twenty-five hours and forty minutes. During the war, the seaplane operations made Foynes one of the biggest civilian airports in Europe. When Shannon Airport opened on the northern bank in 1942, the flying-boat days ended fast, and the station closed in 1946.
The port
The port is the town’s working life now. It was first surveyed in 1837, and it is now the site of a major deep-water port operated by the Shannon Foynes Port Company, Ireland’s second-largest port facility, handling over ten million tonnes of cargo a year through six terminals. The port is the reason the town is there, in the same way the terminal was the reason the town was there before — the water is the business, and the town is where the business happens.
The coffee
There is one more thread. Irish Coffee is claimed to have been invented in San Francisco, but it was first made at Foynes, in 1943, by Joe Sheridan, the chef and bartender of the Brendan O’Regan’s, when he was asked to make something hot for passengers whose flying boats had been cancelled by fog. He took it to San Francisco a decade later, and the town still claims the origin.
Practical
Foynes is a stop on the estuary, not a destination that needs one: the harbour, the water, the history of the crossing, all inside the hour. Pair it with Limerick city for the head of the estuary, or with the estuary drive for the whole water.