20th - 27th October. Shannon - Erne Waterway to Aghalane

From Haughton's Shore we carried on down the Woodford River. At places the river is quite wide, and it is difficult to see where the river bank is. There is very little visible flow however.

At Skelan Lock (lock 3) Sally had to get on to The Puzzler in the lock, as the lower lock mooring was under water.

Further on we were very glad to see markers ahead of us, to show where the safe navigation channel was. Click on this picture to see this meander in the river more clearly.

We stopped overnight in Ballyconnel and the manager from Supervalu delivered 40 'bales' of compressed peat to the boat for us. Each bale has 22 or 24 small bricks, so this should last us for a while.
At Corraquil lock (lock 1) we stopped on the upper lock mooring and stayed there for a couple of days, in the vain hope that the rain would stop.

We were rather taken with this stretch limo! The house was quite near to us, on the other side of the lock, and on Friday night we could hear the heavy beat of music from 9 until 10.30 pm. A civilized time to stop, we thought. However, that was only the rehearsal! On Saturday night  the beat started at 7.30 pm and went on until after 6 am. It was obviously a good party!

This cow and her cute calf were just over the fence from us at the lock. They, and the rest of the herd, were very interested in Catkin, galloping alongside whenever they saw her. She was unimpressed.

We moved on on Sunday, as the water above and below the lock were getting nearer and nearer in level. There was only about a one foot drop in the lock when we went down.

Normally the walkway down to the jetty is quite steep here, but it was practically level. Two days after this the lock was closed as the water level was higher than the lock gates.

We reached the floating pontoon at Aghalane safely. There is now electric hookup, which is new on this mooring since we were here last. A great deal of work has been done here this summer and it going to look wonderful when it is finished.
On the opposite side of the river a new lake has appeared temporarily, as the water rises over the banks. 

We rise higher by the day, and the water level has gone up 18" in two days. It is about four feet higher than it was when we were here in May.

Here we are looking across the slipway from our pontoon. It really is down there somewhere!

We went for a walk down the river bank, but had to turn back. It looked rather damp ahead of us!