Tearmann Bearaigh · Co. Roscommon
A Shannon lock village on the N5 where Roscommon meets Longford, run by the river and one very good hotel.
Tarmonbarry is a small village on the River Shannon where Roscommon hands over to Longford. The N5 crosses the bridge here on its way from Longford town out toward Strokestown and the west, and most of the traffic does exactly that - crosses, and keeps going. The ones who stop tend to be on the water, or hungry, or both.
The name is Tearmann Bearaigh, the sanctuary of Berach, after the sixth-century saint who founded a monastic settlement on this stretch of the Shannon. Nothing of that survives above ground to look at. What gives the village its shape now is the lock - Termonbarry Lock, with its weir, one of the working locks on the Shannon Navigation that lift boats between the lakes and let pleasure craft run the river north and south. There is a marina, public moorings, fresh-water taps and a slipway, and on a fine summer day the lock is the show: arrive, tie up, wait your turn, watch the gates and the water do their slow business.
For about ten years between 1925 and 1935 this calm reach of the Shannon was a centre for hydroplane racing, until the cost of keeping the boats running killed it off. It is the kind of fact that sounds invented and is not. The village these days has the hotel, a shop, a petrol station, the GAA pitch of St Barrys up the road, and the river. That is roughly the whole inventory, and it is honest about it.
Cross the bridge to the Longford side and you reach Clondra, where the Royal Canal finally meets the Shannon at the cut-stone Richmond Harbour - the canal was reopened the whole way from Dublin in 2010, and this is the western end of it. If you are walking, cycling or paddling the waterways, Tarmonbarry and Clondra are effectively one stop with a river down the middle.