An Irish Canalboat Adventure.: Cruising the River Barrow on a Narrow Boat in Spring.

By Roger Hobart and Sandi Hobart

This is a how we did it book for vacationing in Ireland. The main focus of the vacation is renting a canal boat for a week and seeing the sights on the River Barrow. We encourage others who have an interest in doing this, but have no idea how to do it, to use our experiences as a rough guide. We describe our planning and execution of the trip in detail with lots of pictures. It was a beautiful trip.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781626758384

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When we finished this vacation and returned home to Florida, our friends asked us how the trip went. After the usual tall tales and slide shows, almost all of them (non-cruising boaters) asked if they would be able to make a trip like this either on their own or with one or two other couples. Sandi and I certainly believe that they could. We wrote this book to give them our experiences as a planning guide. This trip was just so much fun, we had to share it.

In Ireland, Roger met only one crabby person during the entire trip. Maybe it was Roger’s cane that predisposed people to be nice to us, but we don’t think so. The Irish were very nice to us. If we needed directions or advice or just a chat, everyone we met took the time to talk to us. With our slightly Southern, Florida, Texas twang mixed accents, people caught on very quickly that we were not Irish and probably American. A polite, Excuse me, can you help us? was always met with a Surely or something in Gaelic, then switching to English as they saw our bafflement. Not understanding Gaelic, we would be asked where we were from. We got the friendliest conversations going by replying Florida, close to Orlando. It seems to us that everyone in Ireland has been to Orlando and Disney, is going to go, or has relatives who have visited there. From one or two conversations, it seems the Irish are used to pushy German and other European tourists and we looked kind of German. Had we been pushy German or pushy anybody for that matter, the conversation would have been entirely in Gaelic. In other words, no conversation. Start friendly, stay friendly, do not be in a hurry.

In addition to all of the hotel people and strangers on buses and trains and sidewalks who helped us, there were several other people who made our narrowboat trip especially great. Ireland has turned their canals into a series of parks. Long skinny parks that anyone can use. The old canals have footpaths next to each canal and there are caretakers for each stretch of park. They are also the lock keepers. We were the first hire boat to travel down and up the River Barrow that spring. We had lock keepers looking out for us the whole way. They made sure we knew how to use the locks. They often operated the locks with us. They were ready to render assistance if we had trouble and recommended things to see at each village. They were great. We reciprocated by reporting any trouble we saw on the way. We often chatted with them for the 10 to 20 minute locking procedure, then they would jump into their pick up and zoom away to do maintenance or help someone else. They would often get to the next lock ahead of us. We would pull around a corner and there they were, cranking on the key to ready the lock for us. Waterways Ireland operates the canal systems and hires these special (to us) people. Thank you so much Noel Cross, William O’Neill, John O’Neill, Patrick Gill and James Butler. You made our trip extra special and we look forward to coming back and seeing each of you again.

1 Planning For Our Trip

This was to be be our third European trip. We had previously traveled on our own to London, Paris, Germany, and Austria for two weeks without a tour group.  We also visited Paris at Christmas on a Rick Steves’ one week tour of Paris. So we were familiar with the basics of traveling to the Continent. We have not used a travel agent. We just do it ourselves. Roger was raised to be  independent (some say ornery). An extension of men