Baggot Street and the Grand Canal Travel Guide

Running east from Grafton Street and across Fitzwilliam Street, Baggot Street - with its multitude of lively pubs - starts out Georgian, but the street plan is pretty soon broken by the great black metal-and-glass bulk of the Bank of Ireland building, enlivened only by a few brightly coloured metal constructivist sculptures. Just beyond the bank, you reach the Grand Canal, one of Dublin's two constructed waterways - the other, the Royal Canal, runs through the north of the city. True Dubliners, or "Jackeens", are said to be those born between the two waterways.

The Grand Canal was the earlier and more successful of the two waterways: started in 1756 and reaching the Shannon by 1803, it carried passengers and freight between Dublin, the midland towns and the Shannon right up to the 1960s, despite competition from the railways. Its total length, including stretches of the rivers Barrow and Shannon, was 340 miles. The potential for tourism in re-opening the canals has only recently been realized; consequently some patches are clean, free-flowing and beautiful while around the bend the vista is a picture of economic decline. Perhaps the best stretch of the canal to visit is the section around Baggot Street Bridge, where the water is fringed by trees. Baggot Street and a Dublin institution, the late, lamented Parson's bookshop , were haunts of many of Dublin's celebrated writers in the 1950s, including the poet Patrick Kavanagh and the playwright Brendan Behan. Kavanagh lived in a flat nearby in Pembroke Road and produced a "journal of literature and politics" entitled Kavanagh's Weekly and written largely by himself (with a few contributions from Behan and Myles na Gopaleen, aka Flann O'Brien). It ran to a total of thirteen issues before folding, with pieces about anything and everything - professional marriage makers, visits to the bookies, weeks when nothing happens.

The Grand Canal reaches the River Liffey at Ringsend (about a mile northeast of Baggot Street Bridge), through its original locks, constructed in 1796. You can find out more about the history and use of all of Ireland's canals and waterways at the Waterways visitors centre, a little upstream from the Grand Canal Dock