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CARRICK ON SHANNON |
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The small county town of CARRICK-ON-SHANNON , beautifully positioned
on a wide stretch of the Shannon just below Lough Key, is a major
boating centre, and its marina is full of pleasure boats and Shannon
cruisers. The regatta is a lively event, generally held over the first
weekend in August. It also makes a good base from which to cycle round
the southern loop of Leitrim or to investigate Lough Key and Lough
Boderg in Roscommon, and there's good coarse fishing to be had too.
Carrick's raison d'être as a tourist centre received a boost with the
reopening of the Ballyconnell-Ballinamore Canal in the summer of 1994.
The canal provides the final link in the Shannon-Erne Waterway , 239
navigable miles taking in stretches of still-water canal, canalized
river and a sequence of lakes before ending up in Belleek, across the
border in County Fermanagh. A latecomer to the canal-building boom that
swept the country in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the
waterway was completed in 1860, and was used for only nine years before
being made redundant by Ireland's growing rail network.
The single piece of historical interest the town has to offer is the
minuscule Costello Chapel , at the top end of Bridge Street. Billed as
the second smallest chapel in the world, it was built in 1877 by the
fanatically devout businessman Edward Costello as a memorial to his wife,
who died young that year. The couple's lead coffins, protected by thick
slabs of glass, lie in two sunken spaces on each side of the tiny,
beautifully-tiled aisle. Opposite the chapel stands the Market House
Centre - at the time of writing restoration work was still underway, but
once finished it will house, amongst other things, the Leitrim Design
House, a showcase for local crafts-people and interior designers. Also
worth a visit is Cyril Cullen's pebble-dashed Georgian house and factory
shop, Summerhill , on the road to St Patrick's Hospital, where he sells
porcelain figures and his own distinctive knitwear designs - he breeds
his own Jacob sheep for their wool.
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