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SHANNONBRIDGE |
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From Clonmacnois, the road south skirts the Boora Bog to
SHANNONBRIDGE . The road leading into the tiny village has a set of
traffic lights where it meets the Shannon, as the narrow sixteen-span
bridge can only accommodate single lane traffic. Upstream, the wetlands
of the Shannon open up; downstream a power station signifies the
exploitation of the boglands. This is the point where counties Offaly,
Roscommon and Galway meet and the River Suck joins the Shannon: hence
the strategically placed and massive artillery fortification dating from
Napoleonic times. There are a couple of B&Bs here, including Racha House
right in the middle of the village (tel 0905/74249; £33-40/41.90-50.79);
and Laurel Lodge (tel 0905/74189; £33-40/41.90-50.79), a mile out of
town towards Banagher, both of which rent out bikes and boats. The
Shannonside Diner does snacks and light meals ; there's a music pub -
Killeen's Tavern - on the main street.
Just outside the town on the Tullamore Road (the R357), at the Irish
Peat Board, Bord na Mona's Blackwater power-generating plant, you can
join a tour that explores the bog on the Clonmacnois and West Offaly
Railway , which will take you on a five-mile circular tour on narrow
gauge through the Blackwater Bog. Unlike Clara Bog Blackwater Bog is
being exploited hell-for-leather; you can't miss the power station with
its thin chimneys belching brown smoke into the air. The irony of
touring the bog under the auspices of the organization that's itself
helping to destroy it won't be lost on anyone "A few hundred years from
now", says the publicity material, suavely, the bog "will be an
integrated tapestry of fields, woodlands and wetlands. The landscape
never stands still." The tour, which lasts some 45 minutes, leaves every
hour on the hour (April-Oct daily 10am-5pm; £3/3.81) and is preceded by
a 35-minute video on the flora and fauna you're about to see.
Also nearby, and of particular interest if you have children to
entertain, is the Ashbrook Open Farm and Agricultural Museum (April-Sept
daily 10am-7pm; £2/2.54), with plenty of farm animals, donkeys, rare
birds and farm implements.
About five miles further south (take the R357 and turn at Clonony),
Shannon Harbour is where the River Brosna and the Grand Canal meet the
Shannon after their journey right across Ireland. As you walk down to
the junction, there comes a beautiful point where the entire landscape
seems to become water. Clonony Castle , a mile or two further inland, is
a ruined sixteenth-century tower house with a nineteenth-century
reconstructed barn - to the side of which are buried Anne Boleyn's
sisters, Elizabeth and Mary - and which was extensively restored in the
seventeenth century by an entrepreneurial German, Matthew de Renzi.
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