Skateboarding, fishing and laughing - it's all happening in the Millennium Park in Galway. But downriver, the sight of raw sewage mars the happy mood, writes Lorna Siggins.
The Gaol river: there's a certain ring to the name of the little Corrib tributary which borders one of Galway's few magical spaces - the Millennium Children's Park.
Occasional angler John Duffy sits on the wall that now serves as the riverbank, casting patiently for perch or rudd or roach, or even a pike. "Not sure if the bait is right," he says cheerfully. "But I've plenty of time." A pair of swans has nested in among the reeds and the disused traffic cones and beer cans in the shadow of the university and the cathedral. A little further up the narrow waterway, a couple of coots have already reared their chicks.
"That's the old fever hospital over there," Duffy says, pointing to a nearby building which now houses the Irish Centre for Human Rights. The main road link is still known as Beggar's Bridge, he says, and of course the cathedral, built by the late Bishop Michael Browne on the old gaol site, is the Taj Micheál.
We are interrupted by a peal of happy voices in the playground. Maura Heaney comes here often, maybe once a fortnight, with her children Normagh (10), Rian (7) and Carra (6). The Heaneys live just over a mile away in Salthill, where there's a fine children's area at Toft Park.
"But this is definitely more peaceful, and the kids love the skateboarding," Maura explains. "They have a great interchange with their peers. There's something very sociable about skateboarding, and I think they feel a little bit more independent and less conscious of adults around," she says.
Sitting on the bench with Maura is a close friend from college in Dublin, Ann Hester. She lives in Frenchpark, Co Roscommon, but has travelled over with Oran (8), Luke (5) and Rory (3) to stay with the Heaneys for several days. "A good quiet time to be in Galway, just after race week, and this is a lovely spot," she says.
The park is such an integral part of the landscape now that it is hard to imagine that it was only opened in July, 2003. The playground was in good use for some months before that date, having been developed at a cost of €1.5 million by the National Millennium Committee. The ramp was the first dedicated skateboarding area in the city.
"The park will include a fully equipped playground, a broad canal walk for model boating and angling, a small amphitheatre for music and drama and a central green," this newspaper forecast in 1999. "Designated as a 'passive recreation' area for families, it is to be built on a 1.1-hectare site on University Road which was given to Galway Corporation in 1998 by the Bishop of Galway, Dr James McLoughlin." The amphitheatre hasn't quite materialised, nor has the canal walk. There's no promised designated cycle lane over the footbridge. Historian Peadar O'Dowd was a member of the delegation which met the late bishop to secure the site for the young people of the city.
"We'd formed the Galway Waterways Preservation Society to save the Eglinton canal and the Claddagh basin from being filled in and covered over in the late 1960s - for car parking. And this was our last mission. It took us less than a week to persuade the church to sign it over," O'Dowd says.
O'Dowd reckons that the area was always a magnet for children. "They used to swim a little further down the Gaol river from where the Millennium Park is now, at a spot called the 'coffin'. It was so-named because of the shape of a large stone there," he recalls.
It is not something one would contemplate now, with raw sewage clearly visible on the surface of the water. Galway City Council says that a small number of houses nearby haven't connected up to the water-treatment mains.
O'Dowd remembers that there were salmon grilse in the Gaol river when he was young. "We'd whack the fish with our shoes to stun them and throw them in nearby gardens before the bailiffs would come," O'Dowd recalls. "Weren't we terrible. We'd retrieve them later."
