Well hello and welcome to the Driftwood Boat Blog, in this week's episode we take a look
at Meelick Lock on the River Shannon. Waterways Ireland are working on it at the moment and
last weekend they had an open day for members of the Inland Waterways Association and for
the first time in nearly 100 years the lock was emptied to facilitate the installation
of new lock gates. And it was a fantastic opportunity to get in and see the masonry
inside in this lock. I always think that boats look huge until put them into the water, well
there seems to be a similar rule with locks, they look hugh when there's no water in them.
However if you come along here in a boat straight away you'll find that the lock seems too small
and trying to get it in with out bumping something takes a bit of skill. and a bit of good luck.
Now bear in mind when you're looking at the stone work here that this was built at a time
when there was no diesel engines, there was no hydraulics and yet every stone in here
fits together absolutely perfectly, you would not pass a sheet of paper between any two
stone. And this was actually built on soft soggy bog soil, and yet in all the time since
1844 it hasn't subsided one bit, every stone is absolutely flush.
Now the gates are operated by hydraulics but these chains date from a time when a lock
key had to be put onto that spindle there, and the gates would be cranked open. And this
is where the sluices were cranked open. A lot of hard work in them days.
It's only when you're down beside those lock gates that you appreciate how large they actually
are. They're made of a special type of wood that's imported from West Africa the wood
is called Ekki and that's spelt EKKI and it's extremely dense, so dense in-fact that it
actually wont float and I'm told that you can't hammer a nail into it and if you try
to cut it with a saw you'll end up, well having to replace your saw.
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