The canal passes through Maynooth, Kilcock, Enfield, Longwood, Mullingar and Ballymahon has a spur to Longford. The total length of the main navigation is 145 kilometres (90 mi), and the system has 46 locks. There is one main feeder (from Lough Owel), which enters the canal at Mullingar.
The Royal Canal was originally planned to terminate in Dublin at Broadstone [where I live], to serve the then fashionable area of residence, as well as King’s Inns and the nearby markets, but it was extended so that now, at the Dublin end, the canal reaches the Liffey through a wide sequence of dock and locks at Spencer Dock, with a final sea lock to manage access to the river and sea.
The Dublin – Mullingar railway line was built alongside the canal for much of its length. The meandering route of the canal resulted in many speed-limiting curves on the railway. The canal was bought by the Midland Great Western Railway to provide a route to the West of Ireland, the original plan being to close the canal and build the railway along its bed.
The canal travels across one of the major junctions on the M50 where it meets the N3, in a specially constructed aqueduct.
The Viking house is a replica based on a 11th century type one Dublin house excavated in the 1980’s by Patrick Wallis and his team at Wood quay. The house is 8mtrs long and 4mtrs wide, with a ridge height of 3.5mtrs, it has an Oak trestle frame and a door at each end.
The Viking House came about as a project to mark the millennium of the Battle of Clontarf in 1014.
It was built between January and May 2014 by master craftsman Eoin Donnelly and thatched by Peter Compton.
In 1961 excavations in the region of Wood Quay and Fishamble Street in Dublin revealed the perfectly preserved remains of Viking Dublin, dating from the 9th and 10th centuries. The building is an accurate recreation of one of these first Dublin houses based upon the archaeological evidence.
In Viking Age Dublin each house had a fence and a long plot of land in which they probably kept chickens and grew vegetables, fibre and dye plants. We know they ate a lot of wheat and barley as well as growing cabbages, beans and onions.
Large quantities of bones from cattle sheep and pigs, as well as fish and shellfish from Dublin bay meant they had a healthy and varied diet.
I am still testing the Canon 1Ds Mk3 Sigma 24-105 combination. I did not realise that the lens came with a hood but today I discovered a hood in the box and unfortunately I incorrectly attached it to the lens and as a result I had to crop many of my photographs as the hood was visible at the corner of some of the images.
I also uses Dxo Raw to pre-process the photographs before importing them into Lightroom … this was an experiment and it may not be practical to include this step in my workflow.
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