The Shannon

The river

The River Shannon (an tSionainn in Irish) is the major river on the island of Ireland, and at 360 km (224 miles) long it is the longest river in the British Isles. It drains the Shannon River Basin, 16,900 square kilometres — about a fifth of the area of Ireland. By tradition it rises in the Shannon Pot, a small pool in County Cavan, flows generally southwards, turns west, and empties into the Atlantic through the 102 km estuary, with Limerick city at the point where the river water meets the sea water. It was an important waterway since antiquity: the Shannon appears on the maps of Ptolemy, the Graeco-Egyptian geographer, working in the second century AD.

The divide

The river is the physical divide of the island: it separates the west of Ireland — principally Connacht — from the east and the south, and there are fewer than thirty-five crossing points between the village of Dowra in the north and Limerick city in the south. County Clare, west of the Shannon but part of Munster, is the great exception to the rule. The river is tidal east of Limerick as far as the Ardnacrusha canal, which is where the fresh water stops and the sea takes over. To travel the Shannon is to travel the length of the island’s history: the fords, the crossings, the lakes, the towns that grew at the water.

What to do

The river is a cruising water as much as a sight: the Shannon way — the canals, the three great lakes, the weirs — is the slow way across the middle of the island, and the estuary at the end is where it opens to the sea. The drive along the river, from the lakes down to the city, is the easy version of the same trip, and the light on the water in the late afternoon is the reason to do it.

Practical

A river day is a drive day or a boat day: pick the stretch — the lakes, the middle water, the estuary — and let the road or the wake do the rest. The crossing points are the way in; the towns at the water are the bases.