NEW Season 3, Waterways through Time with historian, Turtle Bunbury

Jul 18 2024 24 ep. 27 mins 6
NEW Season 3, Waterways through Time with historian, Turtle Bunbury Podcast artwork

In the NEW SEASON 3 of Waterways through Time, historian Turtle Bunbury further explores the rich history of Ireland’s waterways. With an instinct for quirky details, Turtle turns his attention to the creation of the Grand Canal and the Royal Canal, and how they affected the evolution of the Shannon and Barrow River systems. Full of fascinating and lesser-known facts, this Season includes interviews with Gwen Wilkinson, who named her homemade boat ‘Minnot’ before setting out on her 400 km journey; Patsy Cummins, retired lockkeeper of the Grand Canal’s 29th lock; Joe Gillespie on the rebuilding of the Shannon-Erne Waterway and County Fermanagh storyteller Seamas McAnnaidh, bringing insights to writers and their influences on the water.

  Education  History
RSS feed Share
Copy RSS


Subscribe on Podcast Addict


NEW Episode 8, Season 3, The Navvys

Jul 18 2024 36 mins  
Turtle is joined by Ultan Cowley who shares his insights into the daily lives, motivations and semi-mythological reputations of the Irish navvies who built the canals, and how their successors built Britain’s railways, motorways and the Channel Tunnel.

NEW Episode 7, Season 3, The Royal Canal

Jul 11 2024 36 mins  
Started on the eve of the French Revolution, the Royal Canal is Ireland’s longest manmade waterway running for 145 km (90 miles) from Dublin to the River Shannon. Here Turtle tells the colourful story of its founders Long John Binns and William Cope, and looks at why it took almost 30 years to finish the project.

NEW Episode 6, Season 3: 30 Year Anniversary of the Shannon-Erne Waterway/

Jul 04 2024 32 mins  
It is now 30 yrs since the completion of the Shannon-Erne waterway, linking the Shannon and Erne river systems. It was a pioneering project in many ways, not least as one of the first major collaborative efforts between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Turtle talks with renowned engineer Joe Gillespie, the main OPW representative on the project, for a reflection on ho

NEW Episode 5, Season 3: Writers on the Erne

Jun 27 2024 35 mins  
Irish language novelist and historian Séamas Mac Annaidh discusses his childhood on the island of Enniskillen, as well as the monks who compiled the Annals of Ulster on Belle Isle, the school where Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett studied, and a poem about American GIs playing baseball amid the ruins of Devinish Island.

NEW Episode 2, S3 Genesis

Jun 20 2024 28 mins  
Featuring cameos by James Joyce’s canal-building forbear and Black Tom Wentworth, we learn how the desire to drain and improve Ireland’s boglands led the industrious Georgians to slowly (very slowly) construct some of the island’s earliest canals and waterways.

NEW Episode 4, S3, The Grand Canal

Jun 20 2024 30 mins  
Turtle charts the twists and turns of the long-running project to connect Dublin to the River Shannon.

NEW Episode 3, S3 THE 29th LOCK

Jun 18 2024 33 mins  
Patsy Cummins is the third generation of her family to work on the Grand Canal. Having been keeper of the 29th lock near Tullamore, she talks of the friendships she made along the way and explains how a tragedy at Shannon Bridge brought her family east to Ballycowan.

NEW: Episode 1, S3: Paddling the Waterways’

May 30 2024 39 mins  
Dive into this gorgeous interview with Gwen Wilkinson, who named her homemade boat ‘Minnot’ before setting out on her 400 km journey from the shores of Lough Erne to the tidal waters of the River Barrow in Ireland.

Hidden Treasures of the Waterways

May 12 2023 29 mins  
Turtle talks with marine archaeologist, Dr Connie Kelleher, about the exciting revelations of underwater archaeology on Irish waterways from Neolithic logboats to battle debris to the treasures of the modern age.

Boating on the Barrow

May 12 2023 25 mins  
Boating guru Cliff Reid of www.boatrips.ie discusses the glorious historical, geographical and natural elements of the River Barrow, the second-longest river in Ireland.