Dorf · Co. Limerick
Adare
A heritage town on the tidal River Maigue, southwest of Limerick. The village centers on its medieval market, three monasteries, and the Desmond castle overlooking the ford.
The estuary
In Irish, it’s called Inbhear na Sionainne. This is where the River Shannon meets the Atlantic. Limerick city sits at the head. Loop Head marks the northern limit, Kerry Head the southern one. That’s a stretch of 102.1 km (63.4 miles) of water. Part river, part sea, entirely its own thing. The estuary forms the main boundary between County Kerry and County Limerick to the south, and County Clare to the north. Driving along either shore is the best way to see it.
The tides
This is a tidal water in the proper sense. At Limerick docks, the range runs to about 5.44 metres. That volume made the water a candidate for tidal power schemes. On a spring tide, the Shannon throws up a bore. It’s a wall of water coming up the estuary against the outgoing tide. The Lower River Shannon Special Area of Conservation covers the estuary. It runs 120 km from Killaloe to Loop Head. In the second half of the nineteenth century, about 65 square kilometres of the estuary’s lowlands were embanked and reclaimed. Agriculture drove most of that work. The flat, reclaimed country along the shore shows the mark of it.
The air and the water
The estuary had its moment in the air too. In the late 1930s, transatlantic flying boats were the way across the Atlantic. A flying-boat terminal sat at Foynes on the south shore. When it became clear that flying boats would give way to land-based aircraft, the government confirmed in 1936 that it would build the country’s first transatlantic airport at Rineena. Rineena is on the same shore. The estuary was the crossing of the ocean. Those two terminals are the places it happened.
Practical
A day on the estuary is a drive day. Pick the Clare shore or the Limerick/Kerry shore. Let the road do the rest. The bore is a tide event. Check the times before you go looking for it.
