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In 2019, Gwen Wilkinson set herself the challenge of building a canoe and paddling it the length of Ireland, along a network of inland waterways. She set out from the shores of Lough Erne and navigated a 400 km journey to the tidal waters of the River Barrow in Ireland. More than just a travelogue, her new book, The Waters and the Wild explores the interwoven histories of the people and wildlife that shaped Gwen’s journey. This is an extract from the book…
THE PLAN WAS simple: build a canoe and paddle it the length of Ireland along a network of rivers and canals.
In modern English, the word ‘odyssey’ describes a long journey or spiritual quest marked by many changes of fortune. Such voyages are elemental in the ancient Celtic tradition of immrama and echtrae – the Gaelic word ioramh meaning ‘to row about’.
These early Irish folk stories recount navigational journeys in which the hero sets out in search of the Otherworld or the Promised Land. Springing from an oral heritage, these epic tales have been passed down through generations, adapted and refined over the course of time.
I have a weakness for voyage tales. Growing up, I consumed countless books about the sea and the many great oceanic adventures, from Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki voyage to Dame Naomi James’s triumphant tale as the first female to sail solo around the world via Cape Horn.
I allowed myself to be seduced by stories of mythical islands, such as Tír na nÓg, Hy Brasil and Jonathan Swift’s Lilliput. I was enthralled and terrified by descriptions of Lasconius, Moby Dick and Jaws, mythical leviathans of the deep.
I ran away with a sailor when I had just finished a degree at university. Hungry for adventure and impatient to escape the confines of life on a small island, I set off to travel the length and breadth of the world’s great oceans.
For most of my twenties, I worked and lived on racing yachts. Sailing on the high seas was an addictive way of life – exotic and exciting, with a whiff of danger.
Ocean-crossing on a boat powered by sail alone is physically and mentally challenging. Concepts of space and time took on a new import. The longest voyage I ever made at sea beyond the sight of land was 38 days. The experience was immersive in the extreme. On those journeys, I realised how possible it was to experience remoteness and wildness.
Then, after several years, I turned my back on the nomadic lifestyle of a sea gypsy. I hankered instead for a more stable, settled and routine existence, until what should have been a perfectly benign experience triggered an old familiar yearning.
Repetitive strain injury was causing serious pain in my right arm. Fifteen years moulding steel to form objects of sculpture had taken its toll on the tendons in my wrist.
I was presented with two options: have surgery or stop what I was doing. As I wavered at the crossroads, some friends came to my rescue. One fine day they bundled me into their car and took me down to my local river – the Barrow, which flows for almost 200 kilometres through the southeast of Ireland.
Recently, a company started offering self-guided canoe trips along its length. Three of us piled into a heavy open canoe and set off downstream for the day.
My crewmates did the paddling, while I sat like Cleopatra in the middle of the canoe. Arcadian views of river, mountain and sky unfolded.
We passed through ancient wooded landscapes that appeared to be devoid of any human presence. The low perspective and silent passage of the canoe immersed us in the river’s habitat. We became absorbed in the waterscape, listening, watching and savouring the environment around us. Gently paced and physically undemanding, the voyage was the essence of slow travel.
The simplicity of the adventure and the sense of escapism it invoked were revelatory. Freed from the noise and stench of diesel-engine power and the complexity of ropes, winches and bossy skippers, I was transfixed by the experience and craved more.
Returning from the day’s paddling, I rummaged out some maps and examined the Barrow’s course. Like most rivers, it can be navigated only so far upstream until it becomes too shallow even for a canoe.
But near the river’s headwaters I noted a short, man-made waterway that would allow me to navigate all the way to the Grand Canal.
Once on that waterway, I would be able to follow its course westwards across the middle of the country and arrive on the banks of the mighty River Shannon. And the journey did not need to end there. As my finger traced the river’s course upstream, I encountered a junction with yet another canal: the Shannon–Erne Waterway.
This restored semi-artificial waterway allowed boats to pass, as the name suggests, from the Shannon to the River Erne, arriving ultimately at the Atlantic Ocean on the island’s northwest coast. In theory, a vessel could navigate a 400-kilometre journey on this inland waterway network. The desire to attempt such a voyage by canoe became irresistible.
Since early childhood, Gwen Wilkinson has been exploring waterways, from canal and river journeys onboard her parents’ barge to transatlantic crossings on ocean racing yachts. An award-winning professional artist and ecologist, she lives in the foothills of the Blackstairs Mountains in South Country Carlow. The Waters and the Wild is her first book, published now.
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Great article! Most people who work full or overtime just don’t have the time to get engaged in politics, and you can see why. Disappointment after disappointment really disenfranchises you. The status quo is incredibly hard to break, and if your primary worry is food on the table and a roof overhead, I totally understand the cynicism. However, there is strength in numbers, and there are more protests on November 12th, so go get ‘em!
@Sylvia Power: I work full time, I’m single, the budget gave me €3.50 a week…. wow… €3.50 a week better off..my bills gone up the same as someone on the dole, my food just as expensive, they get €12 a week, plus fuel allowance plus Christmas bonus, the Carers Yes, the disability allowance yes, the pensioners yes, they deserve it, but there’s plenty of work out there, people on the dole dont want to work, and the tax reliefs went to the well off, as usual. No wonder there’s bad feeling.
@Patricia O’Brien: Yes Patricia, I’m in roughly the same boat as you, an extra €3 a week, and no eligibility for anything else. I do think though, that the modus operandi of FF/FG is to make people annoyed about those worse off than them, because it detracts attention from the super rich, who have seen their wealth grow by billions. I don’t think there is anyone on the dole who is having a lavish life, it’s not possible. So even though it’s frustrating, we should channel that frustration into looking up, at the super wealthy, and not looking down.
Most people are happy enough with the budget, from what I see. Anyone with a brain knows that price rises and pressures on the cost of living are caused by the war in Ukraine, that they’re not some conspiracy dreamed up by Michael Martin or Leo Varadkar. So we all.understand that there’s no quick fix, no magic bullet to completely insulate us from the rest of the world.
Except the Mary-Lounatics, they want everything to be free.
@John Mulligan: fuel was well up before the war started in February. Not saying it was a bad or good budget but all price rises cannot be blamed on the war
@John Mulligan: I think low paid workers have been completely shafted by this government. Someone on 30k is €3.67 better off weekly. Someone on 40k is 15.97 better off weekly. Surely it should have been the other way around!?!
@NotMyIreland: I disagree. The squeezed middle have more than paid their fair share. It was about time we got something back, even if it it was scraps at €16 a week.
@John Mulligan: You either don’t know what’s happening or you know and are misdirecting. Either way, your post is wrong on all counts.
@John Mulligan: Like Covid the war in the Ukraine is now a get out clause. Housing crisis, Rents, Homelessness, Crumbling Health service were there before Covid and the war. Judging by the media, and people’s responses the only two happy with the ( Give away Budget) was O’Donoghue and McGrath. The Billions thrown about like confetti was the money tree that FFG/ Greens stated didn’t exist. When you divide by the week how much will the lump sums are worth ..it’s miniscule. Martin and Varadkar have disappeared since yesterday Darragh O’Brien being interviewed on the news today made Fr Jack seem legible. He stumbled and diverted every question concerning the Budget. He tried to defend the Indefensible.
@Christopher Byrne: how would you classify someone on 30,000, I would say they are the squeezed middle as well, above the limit to qualify for any additional welfare support, same as someone on 40,000, the lower paid employed people have been forgotten in this budget, absolutely appalling, if USC reductions had been applied, similar to the increase in personal and PAYE tax credits, his would have created a fairer system to all PAYE workers. But when did logic ever apply to anything this government does.
@John Mulligan: anyone with a brain?
That counts you out then…
@John Mulligan: ahh John…..are you still working deep undercover for FFG press office
@John Mulligan: whose your “We all understand” you dont speak for me. The energy companies profit ? Gov go nothing, the tax reliefs go to higher paid .. the housing crisis, the healthcare crisis goung on for YEARS? What’s that got to do with Ukraine ? Lies lies lies. As usual.
@John Mulligan: question for you, if the pressure on the cost of living is caused by the war on Ukraine, how are energy companies posting bumper profits? I may be wrong, but I haven’t seen bumper losses. I’ve seen multi nationals boasting and posting dividends. I don’t understand the narrative , because the financial postings seem to contradict it
@John Mulligan: so you think everything was rosey in the garden here before the war in Ukraine…have you been living in some secret garden where the cost of living wasn’t already sky high…
Amazing how you manage in nearly all your posts to tear down Sinn Fein and they are not in Government and haven’t been for over 100 years…
Can’t take you seriously at all, blind misplaced hatred and near constant government cheer leading for the current government who can do no wrong in your eyes.
@NotMyIreland: people that don’t make an effort to work got €12 increase paid by the muggins that got 4 euro
Never has change been so clearly in the air. Never has there been such pressure on the government from the opposition.
The time is ripe to great a society that rewards the great work people have put in over 20/30 years in growing the economy.
We’re a society not an economy after all.
There is no point in watching them politicians spin the same rubbish everytime in a different way.
It’s being the same for decades now.
Promises after promises but at the end its us taxpayers are taking the brunt of the pain all the time.
@Vincent Hughes: 100 years of civil war politics is ending. Thank goodness we have a proper left v right Parliament at the moment. The battle lines have been drawn in bold font.
@Peter McGlynn: to be fair its “civil war politics” policies that allowed an 11bn budget without borrowing….
@NotMyIreland: and it’s Mary-Lounacy that will throw all that away.
@John Mulligan: There’s nothing left to throw away. The place is ruined for the next generation.
@Peter McGlynn: Civil war politics? FF/FG are two sides of the same coin. When FF made mess, They were replaced by FG who made matter worse..only then to be replaced by FF…and so the circus continued.
Some people don’t seem to realise that our old age pension is pretty good compared to other countries especially our next door neighbour
@Martin Dolan: We have old age pensioners terrified of the incoming winter bills. What a voluntary we live in for sure Marty.
@David Corrigan: Try again its not Marty and what’s a voluntary
@Martin Dolan: Sorry Marty. I meant country.
@David Corrigan: Pretty good one. Again, compared to neighbours Davo. Bet you think you’re pretty smart right?
@Sean D: Who are you?
@Martin Dolan: Unfortunately over the next few decades or even sooner for some it’s going to get a lot worse for a lot of pensioners. I refer to the ones who never had the ability to buy a home living through FFG housing policies.
It is ironic that you choose to compare our OAP to the worse pension bar one (south Africa) in the OECD , the British pension. In the OECD’s pension at a glance report, Ireland came 43/51 with Croatia, Turkey, Netherlands, India, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Argentina etc leading the field with the % of the working wage at retirement. But according to data from The World Bank, retirees in the six countries with the largest pension systems are living between eight and 11 years longer – and a massive 16 years longer in Japan. If you consider that the cost of living in Ireland is the second highest in the EU for fuel, energy , services, food, Insurance, housing etc then you will understand why pensioners are watching as their living standards plummet as the increases in pension rates announced do not even keep pace with the rises in prices so despite the hu ha, pensioners will be cold and/or hungry and for most people there will be a slide to poverty, the worst since 2009.
the old saying ‘give a person a fish, they eat for a day’ feels relevant. That’s is what each budget is. We have never really ‘learned to fish’ in this respect, we will never (at least in my lifetime) see another train, a working healthcare system, housing infrastructure, all the budgets in the world will not make the country better for its people, most don’t care if they’re getting a fiver or giving a fiver, budgets are some of the biggest non-news events that media outlets need to generate content.
I think families with young children or primary school children did OK, the free books is a big deal as well as a double child benefit payment in November and 25pct reduction in childcare fes. College students too, this year ans in the future. Renters got something…maybe not enough if you live in Dublin. People in the middle will not have to give as much tax over, which is important to say. It is already their money and now a bit less of the 40% tax will have to be paid.
We all get something with the electricity credits, as long as the companies do not raise prices to match.
“Overhearing one chat I’m conducting on the subject, a woman interjects to give her thoughts: “Crap, if you’re elderly!” The woman who I’d originally been talking to nods serenely and translates: “I would have liked more, as a pensioner.” ”
Oh god, will pensioners ever stop moaning? You’re at least 30euro per week better off than other social welfare recipients including disabled people and carers
They have given all these extras,but wouldn’t by u a coffee,the carbon tax is coming in again this month,the €3.50, we got,won’t probably be enough to cover that,they didn’t hit the mega rich companies,or the big housing builder,the 3000 that’s been added on to concrete,that’s nothing to these builders who are getting the guts 450 or half a million for a house,there only a normal family home when finished.hit the small builder who’s probably struggling already,because the vulchers seem to get the big builds and has to pay for sparks, plumbers you name it,no wonder the tradies are leaving here
All they do is sat what was said the year before that was suppose to be done,that’s been going on for years,I’d say 30 years were waiting for a by pass,or even a ring road because of the traffic in town still waiting..just look at the children’s hospital..have no faith in any of them
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