Hiring a boat in Carrick: what a week on the Shannon is really like

Two self-drive cruiser fleets tie up at Carrick, and hiring one is the thing this town does that almost nowhere else in Ireland does at this scale. It is also the thing people have the most wrong ideas about. This is what the week is actually like.

You do not need a licence

No boating qualification is required on the Shannon for a hire cruiser, and neither operator asks for one. What you get instead is a handover: someone walks you round the boat, shows you the controls, the gas, the water and the pump-out, and takes you out to practise manoeuvring, mooring and working a lock before they let you go. Take that session seriously. Berthing a twelve-metre boat in a crosswind is the part that goes wrong, not the driving.

The two fleets

Carrickcraft operates from a marina just downstream of The Dock, with boats from two berths up to twelve. Parking at the marina is free and outdoors. Reservations are handled from the company's office rather than from the yard, and the company is registered in Co. Armagh, so do not be surprised by a Northern Ireland number when you ring.

Le Boat, which older locals still call Emerald Star, has the other base on the same reach of river. The Irish brand was absorbed into Le Boat and emeraldstar.ie now lands on the Le Boat site, but the yard has not moved. Its hire season runs April to October. Bike hire, angling dinghies, gas barbecues and secure parking are all pre-bookable extras, and the security and engine-hours deposits are taken locally by card, Visa or Mastercard only.

Where a week actually takes you

Carrick is close to the top of the navigable Shannon, which shapes every route out of it. Downstream takes you through Jamestown and Drumsna towards Lough Ree and eventually Athlone. Upstream and west opens onto Lough Key, which is in Co. Roscommon rather than Leitrim, and on north to Lough Allen. North-east from Leitrim Village the Shannon-Erne Waterway runs through a chain of locks into Lough Erne.

Most people take the boat out and bring it back to the same marina, because a one-way trip means arranging transport back to your car. Both operators will help with a taxi transfer if you want to do it, but plan it at the booking stage rather than on the Friday.

What to do before you cast off

Provision in town. Coffey's on Bridge Street bakes its own bread and cakes and opens seven days. The butcher on Main Street is a proper counter and will sort out a week of meat. If your handover is on a Thursday, the farmers' market runs in the Market Yard from ten to two with fish, organic meat, breads, eggs, fruit, vegetables and cheese, and it is by some distance the best food hour of the week in Carrick.

Take more layers than you think and take waterproofs regardless of the forecast. The town gets a little over 1,100 mm of rain a year, spread evenly, and a boat is a windy place. Sun cream too: the glare off the water in July is real.

The cost question

Prices move with boat size and season and neither operator publishes a single headline figure, so get a quote rather than working from a blog. What is worth saying is how the sums compare. For a family of four or six, a week on a cruiser sits in the same range as a rented house, and the boat moves. You wake up at a public mooring on a different stretch of water each morning, with no accommodation to check out of. Set against that, it is weather-dependent in a way a house is not, and a wet week on a small boat is a long week.

If a week is too much

You do not have to hire anything to get on the river. The Moon River is a fully enclosed, heated passenger cruiser running public sailings from the quay beside the Landmark Hotel, at twenty-one euro for adults, nineteen for seniors and eleven for children aged four to sixteen, with under-threes free. Bookings close at eleven on the morning of the sailing and seating is not reserved, so board early if you want a window. A small number of walk-up places are held back at the pontoon, but that is a gamble on a bank holiday weekend.

For paddlers, Waterways Ireland's Shannon Blueway runs 16.5 km from Drumshanbo down to Carrick in five sections. The last of them, Leitrim Village to Carrick, is eight kilometres and graded intermediate, reckoned at about three and a half hours. The sections above it are graded beginner and are shorter. Read the wind before you commit to the last leg: Waterways Ireland flags that the river widens coming into Carrick and roughens quickly.