Hi guys hello and welcome, this is the Driftwood Boat Blog and I'm Harry & I,m Marion. This
is Driftwood our boat and we are out on Lough Garadice in the middle of winter.
So Haughton's shore is back that direction there. I'll just pan around here. That Island
there is Cherry Island, I don't think there's any cherrys on it. There's a right wind.
That's a headland there ahead of us, and that's Church Island over there. Now you may remember
the last time we came up we went onto the right hand side of Church Island. But what
we're doing at this stage is we're going to just avoid the worst of the wind. So we're
going to go round the other side of Church Island. We're going to try to keep into a
bit of the lee.
I don't know if you can see the motion of the boat but it's just a little bit rocky,
because those waves are coming from that bay in there. So they have traveled quite a bit
before they reached us. But if you see up ahead you see there's calm water again. Where
as if we had gone to this side of the lake over here the waves would have traveled an
awful lot further and they would be quite large by the time they reach the far shore.
So were kind of keeping into the lee of this headland, here now. Were going to go between
Church Island which is here and that headland and again we'll keep into the lee.
It's not that it's excessively choppy or anything, it's just an exercise in keeping it comfortable.
That's Swan Island over there now. Swan Island, years ago there was a restaurant there, we
had a great evening there with some friends of ours, Fred & Dianne, Charlie & Deidre and
Des &Ann. I think there was a bar there as well wasn't there? Ye there was. It's an awful
pity that it's gone. Cos it would be good, cos it's choppy now, I know it's only half
ten in the morning, but yesterday evening I wouldn't have minded going over there for
a meal. Ye know, be nice.
When we were coming down the lake the last time we noticed that there was a couple of
fence posts floating in it and they weren't floating flat, there was just one end of them
poking up out of the water only be a few inches. And there quite hard to spot. So were just
kind of keeping our eyes peeled for them because if one of those were to find a propeller it
would do a queer bit of damage.
Oh there's a real cutting wind here. But it's still lovely!
Work on building this waterway commenced in 1846 at the time of the great famine here
in Ireland. And it took a total of 14 years to build and over 7,000 men actually dug this
waterway. When it did open it remained open for 9 years and during those 9 years only
8 boats actually passed through it. By the time it had opened it had already been superseded
by the railway network.
Oh Boy. We tie up here for a minute? Ye can you tie that up... here I'll give you down
the blue one first of all.
Well all my talk about how great it is to go boating in the winter, was bound to come
back and bite me. And it did, with avengence. We just got a downpore it absolutely, torential
rain. So luckely I was onboard, I was able to get in out of most of it, poor Marion was
out side doing the lock so she got drenched. She's inside getting changed now. So I've
had a change of hat. This is my extreem sun and extream rain hat. And eh, it works well
in both. Right... time to get moving again. Lets hope that rain stays off for another
while.
Make sure to join us in the next episode as the winter clouds give way to some lovely
bright winter sunshine, we get so nice clear blue sky's and we'll continue our journey
along the Shannon Erne Waterway, and in the next episode we're going to head up to the
beautiful Kilty Bardan Lough. And we'll stay over night on a lovely island jetty up there.
So looking forward to seeing you then. Thanks for watching guys.