|The Shannon Estuary|   Kilrush|   Upper Shannon Estuary|    Limerick|    Lower Shannon Estuary|

Introduction to the Shannon Estuary
by Tom Cunliffe
one of Britain's leading writers on sailing and the sea

For the visiting sailor, the far West of Ireland remains one of the planet's rapidly diminishing store of magical places. The majesty of the scenery speaks for itself. But taken alone, it cannot explain why the sharp coast and the deep bays north from Mizen Head sing a unique song.
It is easy to find solitude here, and to hear half-understood voices coming down the wind telling of suffering and enforced partings, of hermit monks on far-flung islands a hundred years after the Romans left Britain, of poets whose Irish and English surges like the sea-waves, and of the essential optimism of the county people of Ireland. No other land in Europe generates such atmosphere, and nowhere does the lift-sigh float so generously on the breeze as on the ocean's edge.
Reaching north from Dingle marina you will probably choose the passage of Blasket Sound, swishing through on a rip-roaring tide past the deserted island village that gave the world the writings of Tomas O'Crohan, Maurice O'Sullivan and Peig Sayers. You might then opt to push into Tralee Bay beyond the remote Maharees where families of pilots put to sea in curraghs at the height of winter gales to pilot ships up to Fenit. Today, there is a small marina tucked in behind Fenit pier where the cruising sailor can secure in comfort for an overnight stop.
In the morning, it's away northwards once more, but only for ten miles to where the land plunges north-east at Kerry Head and the outer mouth of the Shannon opens up. As the boat runs off towards the immense river, the long, round-backed tongue of West Clare reaching out to Loop Head is studded with white cottages and the small, ancient fields of the ocean coast. Among the tiny farms are low, abandoned homes with their roofs caving in and their owners gone to America, adding to the sense that life hangs suspended between an unknowable past and an unpredictable future: then Beale Point comes abeam and the estuary swings east towards Limerick and swift water borne access to the heart of Ireland. You can see why this was a favoured seaway of the Vikings.
Over the bow, the twin 740-foot chimneys of the Money Point power station rise impossibly skywards; opposite them on the south bank, still largely below the horizon, stands it smaller partner, Tarbert power station. Steaming down-river is a 200,000-ton bulk carrier in ballast, having just discharged enough coal to keep half the nation in electricity. To seaward, another huge ship is taking on her pilot, bound of the deep-water berths twenty miles inland at Foynes.
All this activity reminds you that a mere fifty miles upstream, airliners are taking off from Shannon Airport, where two generations ago a few turf-cutters scratched a precarious living from the bog.
Just as you are losing that sense of timeless Irishness that has held you spellbound, the flood presses you on and the island of Scattery pops up ahead, revealing the soft open gables of its ruined abbeys and the tallest round tower left in the land. You are experiencing the ancient Ireland of the Celtic. Christians embracing a future where local people can finally find work.  Next Page