An ‘ecotrip’ on the river shannon (ireland) in an inflatable kayak

After some back and forth, looking at rivers on maps, we settled on the longest river in the British Isles: the River Shannon in Ireland. The idea was to go from the source (the Shannon Pot in County Cavan) and paddle over 300km down to the river's end in Limerick. From our research it was obvious that plastic pollution in the oceans is currently a huge problem but also in rivers where much of it originates. So we decided to do our bit by collecting all the plastic pollution we would find along the course of the Shannon. 

With the basic outline put together, I needed to prepare! First stop - get a kayak. Itiwit were really behind the trip and set me up with everything I needed, from paddles to the inflatable kayak itself! I’m a complete novice when it comes to kayaking so to jump into a trip like this… I knew my fitness would need to improve. Some very good advice that was given to me was: the gym is not as good as paddling - get out on the water, as much as you can! This was good advice; my first real practice was on the Regent’s Canal in London, and after repeating the 15km between Limehouse and Little Venice twice in one day, I was left with a sprained wrist and some sore shoulders. This concerned me for the trip but was in fact the best thing I could have done to prepare; I feel like I was much stronger once I was rested up.

The big take home lesson as we went along the canal, was picking up all the plastic would not be feasible. We knew Ireland wouldn’t be as dirty as London but collecting plastic really reduced our speed. We changed the plan to collect as much plastic as we could carry and sought out some litter pickers to help the effort.

Ireland is a beautiful country, incredibly green with wild horses roaming the land. Camping down the river seemed to be straightforward; there were usually sections of unused rural land right on the riverside, where we arrived at sunset and left at sunrise easily enough. There was only one instance where we misjudged this and were awoken by 20 bulls and a mildly disgruntled farmer who explained that this was in-use farmland. A slightly strange early morning confrontation which developed into a friendly conversation ending with the farmer and his herd letting us be on our way.

The other big consideration we had on our nine-day river journey was keeping stocked with supplies. Generally, we came across shops every 24-48 hours, so this was rarely a big issue but there were a few occasions where I was pretty unnerved about how much water we had remaining. My two companions, weirdly I thought, seemed less concerned which I later learned was because they had iodine tablets so that they could drink the river water if it was needed. When we arrived in Athlone one of our team became suddenly ill this, we later discovered, was due to drinking the river water without using the iodine tablets. We were quite fortunate in the timing of this, as Athlone is the only town with a medical centre for most of the journey.

Lessons learnt: don’t forget the water purity tablets and be careful where you camp.~ 

The section of the Shannon past Castleconnell I would recommend checking out. There are some mild rapids on the stretch which are very easy to take as a novice, and incredibly fun! The section is restricted for boats (it is managed by the fisheries board – check timings for when you can paddle) and as a result the scenery looks untouched - beautiful plants and bird life everywhere!

Like Castleconnell, a lot of the river went through rural Ireland, so there was hardly any plastic to collect at times. From looking I was pretty impressed with how clean the river was although I suspect some plastic had sunk to the riverbed out of sight and out of reach. It was very noticeable approaching Limerick that we were in populated waters. This was the only section where we struggled to carry all the rubbish we found. There was some gross stuff in this section, particularly near the University. Nevertheless, we bagged it up and took it on our way, entering the final section. The last 10km was really difficult - we’d been at it for nine days now and were in tidal waters…except the tide was against us. It was like paddling through mud. I’d like to say sheer determination got us to the end but I was mainly dreaming about not sleeping in a tent and eating a pizza.~~