Waterways - The Royal Canal - Season 1

The Royal Canal has been disused and derelict for over half a century and it has now been painstakingly restored. Dick Warner is going to travel on it by barge from from the Liffey to the Shannon. It was 1992 when he first did something like this - travelling from the Liffey to the Shannon on the Grand Canal. Between then and now economic boom and bust has totally transformed Dublin's docklands. Why is he doing this? Because the passing years have failed to quench his thirst for exploration. Unexplored territory doesn't exist any more - but it's not necessary for exploration. And so he joins his boat, which is called Rambler, and is owned and crewed by members of the Connon family - John Junior, Evan and Johnnie Senior.

In this week's episode of Waterways, Dick and the crew of Rambler leave the urban landscape of Dublin behind them to embark on the next leg of the journey. The outside world disappears as the canal dives into the Deep Sinking - a narrow rock cutting filled with extravagant vegetation. It runs from Castleknock to Clonsilla. Dick and the crew struggle slowly through with Rambler. Dick wonders how on earth this phenomenal cutting was built over two hundred years ago

In this weeks episode of Waterways - Dick and the crew of Rambler enter the Long Level - the stretch of the Royal Canal between the seventeenth and eighteenth locks that's 32 kilometres long.

In this weeks episode of Waterways Dick and the crew of Rambler reach the end of the Long Level and begin locking up to the summit level of the canal. Dick disembarks at Riverstown to explore long abandoned railway station at Killucan. No train has stopped here for 47 years, there's an eerie post-apocalypse feel about the place. James A. Corroon remembers a much busier time when passengers and livestock were regularly transported from Killucan Station. A campaign has begun to get the station re-opened again to serve the expanding communities surrounding it.

Dick and the crew of Rambler are now well on their way to reaching the Shannon. At this stage in the journey their relationship with time has completely changed. Theyâve adjusted to a much slower pace of life, a pace persisting from some earlier century. They reach Ballynacargy and Dick disembarks to wander around the neatly landscaped and well-maintained harbour. At the local ICA Country Market, Dick meets local food producer John Rogan. John gives him some of his delicious smoked bacon to sample and talks to him about how the banning of eel fishing almost shut his business down, hence he has diversified into smoking meats.

In this week's episode of Waterways Dick takes a break from Rambler and its crew and heads off in his canoe to enjoy a spot of fishing. He catches some perch and roach and carefully returns his prey to the canal. Back on Rambler he takes the wheel and guides the hull through green countryside on a ribbon of brown water like a spaceship on a long interplanetary mission. At Mosstown Harbour Dick disembarks to visit the Corlea Trackway Visitor Centre. He visits the preserved eighteen metre tocher, a section of the massive wooden roadway built across the bog in the year 148 BC. Noel Carberry shows Dick the fascinating bog vegetation surrounding the centre including some carnivorous pitcher plants whose prey-trapping mechanism features a deep cavity filled with liquid known as a pitfall trap.