The Shannon Estuary

The estuary

The Shannon Estuary (Inbhear na Sionainne in Irish) is the large estuary where the River Shannon flows into the Atlantic Ocean. It has Limerick city at its head, and its seaward limits are marked by Loop Head to the north and Kerry Head to the south — a stretch of 102.1 km (63.4 miles) of water that is part river, part sea, and entirely its own thing. The estuary defines the main boundary between County Kerry and County Limerick to the south and County Clare to the north, and the drive along either shore is the way to see it.

The tides

The estuary is a tidal water in the proper sense: the range runs to about 5.44 metres at Limerick docks, which is enough to have made the water a candidate for tidal power schemes, and enough that on a spring tide the Shannon throws up a bore — the wall of water that comes up the estuary against the outgoing tide. The Lower River Shannon Special Area of Conservation incorporates the estuary and runs 120 km from Killaloe to Loop Head, and in the second half of the nineteenth century about 65 square kilometres of the estuary’s lowlands were embanked and reclaimed, largely for agriculture. The flat, reclaimed country along the shore is the mark of that work.

The air and the water

The estuary had its moment in the air as well as on the water. In the late 1930s, transatlantic flying boats were the way across the Atlantic, and a flying-boat terminal sat at Foynes on the south shore. When it was clear that flying boats would give way to land-based aircraft, the government confirmed in 1936 that it would build the country’s first transatlantic airport at Rineanna, on the same shore. The estuary was the crossing of the ocean, and the two terminals are the places it happened.

Practical

A day on the estuary is a drive day: pick the Clare shore or the Limerick/Kerry shore, and let the road do the rest. The bore is a tide event — check the times before you go looking for it.