Day One. Sunday 1st of August

Last night I had the canoe on the car and all the gear stacked up ready to go. The main task in the morning was making sandwiches and getting Meara out of bed (the latter the most difficult). We took the new road to Dublin and got there quickly- there is never any traffic on a Sunday morning. We found a good spot for unloading on double yellow lines next to the 'Royal Canal Park' in north Dublin.

We unloaded well and said our good byes. Then we encountered the first problem- having put the boat in the water we found it was clogged with horrible algae. So thick we couldnt pass through it. So the first km we had to drag the canoe along the bank, which was a back breaking start to the day and drew quite a sweat. Fortunately, although we were to come across many weedy sections after this, this was the only section with such disgusting algae.

After leaving the M50 viaduct and passing a couple of locks the canal soon enters lovely countryside. The steep wooded banks of this section mean that you pass through built up areas without seeing any urbanisation apart from some rubbish in the water and the odd bridge.

After the carrying section, the paddling seemed really easy. Meara was a star and did really well on this morning. We had trained alot earlier in the year but with exams and holidays we hadn't done much training recently and I was beginning to worry if the first day target of 29km was a bit optimistic. We amused ourselves here by counting things in the water. Here's a short list



- about 3500 empty cans of cheap lager

- about 30 footballs

-10 shopping trolleys

-5 bikes

- 1 trike

- luckily 0 corpses!



After the first three hours ( probably 10 km) the canal starts to enter more open countryside and the number of cans decreases and the banks flatten allowing more light. The number of fish was phenomenal in this section; shoals of roach and rudd, perch and the odd marauding pike hung in water.

In the afternoon the pace slowed a little but the canal was interesting with spaced locks and lots of bridges. There were walkers and fisherman (all Polish apparently) to say hi to, but not a single moving boat in the whole 29 km stretch.



Arriving into Kilcock to be collected we met a very welcome welcome party. And home for a bath and curry!