Well, that was, underwhelming.
I paid a visit to Clones on Sunday to see this marvellous new canal, that is going to be the leading tourist attraction of South Ulster. The place was hopping with……
Well, not much really. Plenty of people walking, three water bikes for hire and a few canoes. Who’d have seen that coming.
I’ll have a full report soon (currently in Prague on holiday). However, a news article in the Anglo Celt caught my eye. It reports the CEO of Waterways Ireland, John McDonagh, stating that negotiations with landowners along the route of the canal between Clonfad and Castle Saunderson are taking place.
Are you stating, John, that you won’t have powers of Compulsory Purchase for this wonderful tourist attraction? Oh wait, no, the NI Government can see this as the white elephant that it is and sensibly won’t touch it with a bargepole.
Below is a Googlemaps view of Clonfad and the border:
Google hasn’t caught up with the new waterway yet. This ends in a field just at the border with Northern Ireland. The last section of the waterway is on a new alignment as there is a house in the way of the original alignment.
The thought struck me, that if the adjacent landowner(s) don’t want to play ball and either refuse to sell, or, better still, offers to sell, say, a 10m wide stretch of land running from the A3 ESE across the canal bed for 100m, to someone like me, the Ulster Canal is dead.