A Voyage on The Bann
By Malcolm Rogers
It’s an image familiar from the film Deliverance: canoes laden down with gear, paddling slowly along an isolated river, bounded by heavy undergrowth.
The sun breaks through the branches overhanging the river, and sylph-like shadows flit through the trees on the bank. Except this isn’t Georgia, it’s Antrim, and the river isn’t the Chattahoochee, but the Lower Bann in the North of Ireland. Nonetheless there’s a goodly growth of ash, hazel and willow on either side, with moss trailing in the river, along the banks, and at any moment you expect Duelling Banjos to kick in. But the shadows darting in the trees are only red deer or fox, and despite the silence of the waters and probably the finest day the North of Ireland has seen this fall, there is no sign of any other craft on the water. Had we been afloat on the Shannon, it would have been as crowded as the New Jersey Turnpike, and if we were on the Norfolk Broads, boat rage would by now have broken out. But here, on the North’s main north-south waterway, all is quiet.
Irish Voyageurs offers river expeditions by traditional Canadian war canoes, each capable of carrying up to 12 people. These “umiaks” are a world away from the fragile kayaks used in whitewater racing, being large stable affairs. Indeed they are the very craft Luciano Pavarotti uses whenever he goes boating on the Bann. Which admittedly isn’t every often.
If it’s an overnight expedition you’ve selected, then you sleep in a large, green teepee. Funnily enough these don’t look that out of place in the woodland of Ireland – when the sun shines through the golden maple you could easily be on the shores of the Gitchigoomee. But when you pass by an ancient Celtic cross on the bank, draped with ivy, you know you’re in Ireland.
Different parties can elect priorities for their trip – fishing, birdwatching, or merely mooching down the river and stopping off at historical points such as Dunglady Fort near Kilrea – it would take more than one lifetime to discover the reason for all of Ireland’s ruins. The land hereabouts has been held by Celts, Vikings, Anglo-Normans, Cromwellians, Confederate Catholics, Jacobites, Williamites, and Scots.
Other stops include the many pubs, which litter the entire Bann Navigation – these hostelries can be found in little villages such as Moneydig, one of the few towns in Ireland not to have had a song written about it.
Nonetheless it can usually be depended on – like all the other villages – to have a music session somewhere going full throttle most nights of the week.
It’s not all about fishing and having a pint, however. On a Voyageur expedition everyone is expected to muck in with setting up camp, cooking, and of course paddling the canoes. But it’s not a terribly strenuous exercise – easily within the scope of anyone who is even moderately active.
A holiday canoeing on the Bann probably hasn’t occurred to you any more than it did me when I first heard about it. But it really is a holiday with a difference. (Pardon the cliché. It’s almost as tired as I am. But all that paddling, fishing, stopping at pubs, you see . . . ) Maybe I was lucky with the weather – although Billy the organizer assured me that even on a fine soft day (i.e. bucketing down) we were fully equipped for the rain.
This is a quiet place, a gentle place – quintessentially Irish. The weather won’t batter you to the ground with an unexpected Atlantic storm, while on the other hand you’re unlikely to need your sunblock. My NI Tourist Board guide in its French language section describes this area as “absolument époustouflants.” I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I get the general drift. In any language the place is enchanting, and somewhere you probably won’t just visit once.
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