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Erne

Banager & The Shannon / Erne

Banagher

The riverside town of Banagher, which means, "Ford of the Rocks" is located in the Shannon crossing and was originally a small port in the 18th century. It was once home to such literary greats as Anthony Trollope and Charlotte Bronte & also William Wilde the father of Oscar Wilde.

Banagher is an ideal base for touring Ireland. Its main attractiveness is it's complete nature made up of beautiful rivers. A fisherman's paradise with the River Shannon, Brosna, Lough Derg, Lough Allen and the Grand Canal. Offaly's unpolluted waters is home to all types of fish-salmon, perch, pike, brown trout, bream, eels, roach and rudd. Banagher is home to the Course Angling Centre, which holds annual competitions for clubs in April and May as well as September and October each year.

The area is unspoilt, the traffic moderate and most importantly, the people in the countryside, towns and villages are friendly. For evening entertainment Banagher offers a selection of pubs and restaurants.

The Shannon

Watch some of the most beautiful scenery in Ireland unfold in front of you as you get underway. Enjoy the thrill of captaining your very own modern cruiser while the rest of the crew are busy preparing breakfast or lunch. Then you can sit back, relax, and let the mighty River Shannon escort you on a nautical journey of a lifetime.

Rising in County Cavan this majestic river meanders gracefully through sloping mountain ranges, past ancient monastic settlements on a journey that takes some 500 Kilometres to the cosmopolitan city of Limerick and a further 60 miles of estuary where it empties into the wild Atlantic Ocean. It is navigable from Lough Allen in the North to Killaloe in the South.

From Banagher which is ideally located midway along the river you can choose to travel North or South. To the north is Clonmacnoise probably the most important of the many monastic sites located along the river. Further on is the bustling midlands town of Athlone and beyond is Lough Ree, which extends for an incredible 19 miles. It is 6 miles wide at its widest point.

Should you choose to go south then it is the huge expanse of Lough Derg that will bid you welcome. Surrounded on both sides by quaint Irish Villages with welcoming Irish Pubs, serving real Irish Guinness to the sound of traditional Irish music, this is without doubt one of the best cruising areas in Europe. It is also one of the easiest as the Shannon has only 7 locks along its entire 500 navigable kilometres. Lough Derg is the largest of the great Shannon Lakes covering a total distance of some 24 miles between Portumna and Killaloe and it is 9 miles across at its widest point. Killaloe is one of the principal crossing points of the Shannon and the town also boasts some very fine pubs and restaurants.

Shannon – Erne Waterway

The idyllic Island dotted waterway of upper Lough Erne are of set by the mountain fringed waters of lower lough Erne. Beyond Belturbet the Ballymore / Ballyconnel canal links the Erne system with the Shannon Erne system. This link re-opened in 1994, the waterway is approximately 65 Kms in length consisting of 16 locks along the entire link, many of Silver Line Cruisers craft can navigate this system, however some of our cruisers will have air-draft restrictions, full details and advice are available from our main reservations office.