River Lagan Riverland

I'm close to the top of Slieve Croob,

far above the rolling countryside of County Down.

I'm on the hunt for the source of a great powerhouse of a river

and there it is - that wee sheugh is the start of the Lagan

and it's where my journey begins,

because I'm heading away down there on the trail of linen and salmon

in a river that's overflowing with stories and surprises.

Slieve Croob - the "mountain of the hoof" -

the highest of the Dromara Hills and the source of the Lagan.

I want you to meet the man who owns the Lagan.

Well, at least the side of Slieve Croob where it rises.

I think you're a lucky man, you know.

Do you consider yourself to be, kind of, a custodian of a place as special as this?

It is, it definitely is nice. Very peaceful, so it is.

And I couldn't live anywhere else.

Reared here, couldn't live anywhere else.

What's it like in the death of winter? Is it really bad with snow?

You get a share of snow up here, yes. You wouldn't get up here.

-Really?

-No, the place is blocked up, you wouldn't get here. A fall of snow

and the road's blocked with 10-15 foot of snow.

You wouldn't want to be up here, let's put it that way.

But I suppose all that rain, hail, snow, sleet, all the weather,

-is driving the river.

-Well, it starts up here

in snow and finishes up in Belfast in water. It's simple, isn't it?

Snow up here, frost, ice, and once it goes down the river, it melts and disappears.

Lovely thought, Desmond, it's your gift to the city.

It's my gift, yeah, so it is.

From here, on a clear day, you can see the river's final destination,

beside Samson and Goliath, the shipyard cranes.

But it takes a meandering 40-mile route to get there

and geologist, Kirstin Lemon, is here to tell me why.

The Lagan starts here, its humble beginnings,

right down into Belfast Lough.

But it's a really interesting course, a really torturous course,

it leaves here at Slieve Croob,

it goes down to the flat landscape below us

and that's what "lagan" means - low-lying area.

But it travels from here, Slieve Croob, down to Dromara and Dromore,

it swings west and heads towards Donaghcloney,

but then something weird happens, it takes a dogleg.

The reason for the dogleg is because there's a really unusual bit of rock

that sticks out, part of the Belfast Hills,

a rock called basalt, it's really hard.

So, when the River Lagan gets there, it can't go any further

and it heads towards Belfast.

One of the things I like to think about with the Lagan is,

if it wasn't for that basalt, Belfast probably wouldn't be there at all.

This is the old bridge at Finnis, the first village on the Lagan,

and the river's down to its bare bones here in the summer,

little more than a trickle, but there are some locals,

just in here, that I'm dying for you to meet.

The fish in this pool are salmon.

Their parents would have come in from the Irish Sea,

way down there in Belfast, and come up here to spawn.

Now, the very fact that they're here at all is a minor miracle

because, for so long,

salmon were driven out of the Lagan by pollution,

and a wee bit later on in my journey, I'm going to meet

the man who's responsible for bringing them back from the dead.

But first I've a wee bit more exploring to do.

The Lagan's flowing through prime farmland now,

linking communities that were once at the heart of Ireland's

world-famous linen industry.

Scutch mills, bleach greens and fields of flax

coloured the landscape, providing the raw fibre for the spinning mills

and the river was at the heart of it.

Just outside Dromore, there's one last living relic of this industry

that dominated so many lives.

I've just come in from the river, it's one field away over there.

And I'm going to have a look

at something that's a real rarity in the countryside these days.

It's very heavily associated with the Lagan

and two men who know more about it than anybody else

are Felix and Eugene McConville.

Lads, flax.

Yes, we have been growing flax, my family,

for the past five generations, and we still grow a little bit yet.

Just to let present-day youth, people, see what it's like.

Round this area was all flax.

Several hundred acres of flax was grown around here.

Now, take upriver, there was 11 mills above us,

all working in flax.

The heyday would have been back in about the 1870s, 1880s.

Then, at the advent of the First World War,

there was an increase in demand for flax, and the same in the 1940s.

And when I was a wee fella, in the 1940s,

I remember flax all around these fields, everywhere,

and this town here and Logan Barn,

there was flax, workers, sheughs, horses and carts

and some of the early tractors

were all coming into the valley here with flax.

How important is the river in that process?

Most of the mills upstream were water-powered.

There were a few steam ones, but most of them were water power,

including our own, along with a steam engine.

And the water itself, in the River Lagan,

was a very good water for retting flax.

Retting? Now, that's a technical word. I don't know what that is.

Retting is...it's an old Scandinavian word and it means halfways to rot.

-OK.

-Yes, flax, as you know, is a pretty tough crop.

It has to be softened in water for nine to 14 nights.

And by that time, it's taken out, when it's sufficiently retted,

dried out in the fields, brought into the mill,

in some cases it's stacked, and then it's ready to be scutched.

What inspired you to think a museum, a working museum,

was a good way to go with this?

Well, we didn't intend for the museum at the start.

It was back in '82.

My father was alive at the time

and we thought we'd grow a field of flax and revive it.

And it just woke from there.

You think now, you know, all the stuff that comes in

from China and Taiwan and the other growing economies,

a load of synthetic fibre. What do you reckon?

Is that the future, or should you go back to this stuff?

There's a great trend for everything to be natural now.

We're taking a new look at the modern world

and one day the oil and fossil fuels will run out

so we'll have to resort back to the natural fibre.

Now, that day could just be round the corner.

This is a real treat for me.

I live about a mile and a half away from this stretch at Magheralin

and I have never been on it in a boat in my life.

I've caught loads of pike up here along the lily pads

and I've caught lots of trout in the water below the weir

but it's fish of a very different kind

that are driving my journey today.

Remember those wee salmon back at Finnis?

Well, we're about to meet the man who put them there.

The Lagan salmon disappeared, probably some time just before 1800.

The final nail in the coffin was probably the building of the canal

and all the associated weirs without fish passes.

Before that, there'd been the linen industry and a lot of human impact

on the river leading up to that.

Even after the construction of the canal in 1800,

things continued to deteriorate.

The human population grew, sewage treatment was poor,

even as late as the 1970s, there were fish surveys of parts of the river

that showed there was nothing living in it at all,

particularly in the Belfast reaches.

From that period, the 1970s onwards,

membership of the EU brought us

into unified water quality standards through Europe

and we adopted those standards and our water service

and its predecessors put in the sewage treatment works.

A general combined government effort.

And by the mid 1980s, we could see

that there might just be a chance for the salmon to come back.

In spring of 1991, we put fish from the River Bush actually in

and watched and waited to see, um...

through their development, would they go.

Did you believe they would come back?

We knew they'd survive in the river, we knew that.

We were fairly confident of that.

What we didn't know was would they find their way out.

And when we found the first smolts, that's the emigrating ones,

in '92 and '93, we knew we were onto something.

There were a few anxious months

while Robert and his colleagues monitored progress.

The real Eureka moment was when those fish bred, that winter.

We found wild spawn fry from sea-run stock in the Lagan in '94.

How did you feel when you saw the first one?

Er, very hard feelings to describe.

You've gone through a series of imponderables,

don't know what will happen.

All of a sudden, here's the outcome, sitting in your hand.

You know, you say to your crew, "Is that really what I think it is?"

Yeah, that's the salmon.

The photograph here, this is that first fish.

July/August 1994, Ravernet River,

the first wild-bred salmon in the Lagan for 200-plus years.

I think it's class, Robert, you know,

some people carry a photograph of their wife or kids about...

LAUGHS

You've got a fish!

-Well...yeah.

-A proud daddy, I suppose.

Well, yes, and I suppose the real legacy of it

is the challenge now to make that stick and make that sustainable.

We have a lot of work and a long way to go.

We saw those little parr up at Finnis, a long way up from here.

And that's the proof of the pudding, that all this time later,

-you've still got fish coming back into the river.

-Yes.

And we've actually scaled back the stocking programme now,

to leave it in such a way

that we only stock where we absolutely have to

to keep a tributary with some stock in it.

As soon as we see wild-bred fish, we leave it alone for a number of years

and let those fish adapt

and effectively create a new strain of fish

because every river has its own strain of salmon

and the Lagan one is gone and we need to develop a new adapted strain

that suits the nature of the river.

Felix and Eugene McConville preserving the flax flower,

Robert Rosell restoring the salmon.

What other treasures will the Lagan reveal?

Long before the Island Arts Centre was built in Lisburn,

the site was occupied by the Island Spinning Mill,

a huge factory that processed vast quantities of flax fibre,

turning it into high-grade linen sold around the world.

The Lagan river and canal converged here,

the commercial hub of the town, the perfect spot to meet up

with Norman McMaster, who has lived in the area all his life,

and with canal historian, Brian Cassells.

There were quite a number of quays here in Lisburn - eight, nine.

A number of dry docks.

The maintenance of the barges, cargoes on and off,

and of course, this being a centre of linen,

linen on and goods off,

and of course the river, especially between here and Belfast,

would have been used as a source of power.

'A source of power for the mills, but for Norman,

'and his childhood mates, the river and canal were a playground -

'especially the barges - or lighters, as they were known.'

Very often, when we went down to the quay there,

the boats, the lighters,

would have stopped there.

And as the lighter was leaving the river bank, we jumped on.

And the old boy couldn't put you off then.

And he shook his fist at you.

And you got a ride in the lighter up as far as the Union locks.

-So you stole a lift?

-We stole a lift.

Then you jumped off there.

When it came to this lock here, at Canal Street,

-Lock Number 12 as far as I know.

-That's right.

-Is that right?

-Yes.

Er...the horse had to be detached then.

And the lighter man had to propel the boat by a long pole.

When you left the lock here, you had a big, long pole

-and they pushed it into the river.

-Uh-huh.

-And pushed the boat along.

Now, the horse had to be walked

over the Union Bridge

and nearly all the time, there was horse manure on the Union Bridge.

And my old mother sometimes sent me out with a bucket and a shovel

to get some manure for her roses.

Sometimes, the river froze over.

And they had to use an ice-breaker...

which was an old steel contraption,

which lay about Spruce Field there, to break the ice

to let the barges through.

This is one of the oldest parts of the town

where the locals lived cheek by jowl with the river.

Where you're standing here,

-there was a row of houses here, you know?

-Right?

And families were brought up there.

And there were no safety barriers.

The real danger was around the locks.

If you were unfortunate enough to slip down the side of the lighter,

there was the chance of being crushed

between the lock wall and the lighter itself.

And that was a real dangerous happening.

If it was a matter of simply falling into the canal,

well, it was a matter of gripping you by the rear or the trousers

-and hauling you out.

-I can't recall any life belts.

-No. I think you're right.

-I can't recall a lift belt around the place.

-I never knew of lifeboats or life rafts or belts or...

-No, no, no.

The Lagan Navigation Canal was one of the most successful parts

of the network throughout Ireland,

but in the long run, it just wasn't viable.

As far as I'm aware, the lighters carried about 80-90 tonne.

And you realise transporting that by road would be much quicker now,

with these container lorries, one thing or another.

-It took many hours...

-Two days.

-It took two days to get from Belfast to...

-Lough Neagh.

..to Lough Neagh.

Lurgan and the cross and up to Portadown.

So a lorry could do that now in a couple of hours.

A whole, colourful way of life would have disappeared

had it not been for the efforts of enthusiasts like Brian Cassells.

I knew of a lighter in the inner lakes near Athlone.

And after a bit of research,

I found out that the lighter was called The Industry.

And it's an old Barber barge.

It was full of water, the chap who was looking after it

got it pumped out, and believe it or not, it still floated.

It's being brought to the Lock Keeper's Inn,

Castlereagh Borough Council, and it's being restored,

restored to its original.

So it's a very exciting project.

'And the long-term plan is to turn the lighter

'into a floating museum that displays the rich history

'of the River Lagan and canal.'

Your personal memories sort of led to your son paying tribute

in his own way to the Lagan. Tell me about that.

My son Noel probably spent

a lot of his childhood there, along the Lagan, too.

Whether I instilled that into him or not, I don't know,

but he seemed to have this desire to be about the Lagan River

and he finished up writing a song about it.

My Lagan Softy Flowing.

# My Lagan she flows softly

# From Slieve Croob down to the sea

# Through Dromore and Dromara

# Then close to Aghalee

# From Lisburn down to Hilden

# Lambeg and then Shaws bridge

# To Belfast's salty waters

# Where her lonesome journey ends. #

Right, time for a bit of action, and nowhere better to go

than the Belfast Activity Centre at Shaw's Bridge.

A fleet of young paddlers are churning up the water.

It's a place for kids of all ages.

Below the bridge and shooting the rapids is Hannah Craig,

an Olympic slalom finalist with Ireland in 2012.

Shaw's Bridge played a vital role in Hannah's success.

In 2008, I actually didn't qualify for the Olympics

and I was extremely disappointed, but I knew

I had the potential to reach the Olympics, so I move back to Belfast

and we decided to redesign Shaw's Bridge.

It had been a slalom venue before that,

but it hadn't got the permanent pool.

So we got the course up and running again.

Shaw's Bridge actually became our training base

in the lead-up to the Olympics.

The white water could be a little bit more,

but for basic technical work and slalom, it was a great opportunity.

We also ran a programme called Paddling Beyond 2012

to introduce the activity to younger paddlers

and from that, some of them went on

to represent Ireland on an international level.

I understand that your canoe feels a little bit smaller than it did.

Or your kayak. Tell me about it. You've just had a baby.

Yeah, just had a baby six weeks ago.

Biggest achievement, I'd say.

And yes, when I got back,

my boat just a few weeks ago was slightly tighter,

I think my seat had shrunk a bit during those nine months.

But in a few weeks' time, we hope to get him into one of these already,

-so we can't wait.

-I feel privileged to be taking a paddle

with an Olympic finalist,

-but also you're going to give me a wee bit of tuition.

-Yes.

Cos I haven't been down the rapids here before,

so why don't we take a look at them?

-Yeah?

-Yeah.

-All right.

Forward, forward, forward.

Whoah!

Ha-ha! Ow!

-This way.

-Ah, I'm sideways on!

Forward, yeah.

Keep on paddling.

I'm on the rocks!

HE LAUGHS

'The water level is very low at the moment,

'but it still looks like Niagara Falls to me.'

Oh, Lord, we're over the side!

# Many rivers to cross... #

That went well!

# ..And it's only my will that keeps me alive

# I've been licked, washed up for years... #

That was daft, man.

Ah, this is more like it -

a gentle walk a short distance away in Belvoir Park,

counting butterflies with Lagan Valley Regional Park volunteer, Arthur Patrick.

I've lived in the area for 60 years

and I've always come to Belvoir Park.

I like walking, so therefore I thought

I'd try and put something back.

So, what are you doing whenever you're recording what you see here?

-Where does this go?

-Well, when I record,

I take that information and put it into an online site

for the UK-wide butterfly count.

-OK.

-And then the count that is gathered together

from the thousand or so people or sites that are doing this,

that goes to government departments and then to governments

and they are able to assess what climate change,

what their farming policy, their use of pesticides,

-is doing to...

-The wider countryside.

Do you think the butterflies are a really nice indicator,

if you like, about what's happening in the wider world?

Well, being insects, like all insects, they're the sort of

ground-floor for the food chain, or food pyramid.

And therefore, if they're not doing well,

then you can be sure the higher groups will not be doing well at all.

Do you know whether they are doing well?

-Well, they're doing very badly.

-Really?

-So we've lost...

I reckon about 70% of the butterfly species

and numbers over the last 10 to 20 years.

If that is reflected in other insect species and other food species,

then you can imagine the knock-on effect

on the other layers in the pyramid.

The regional park has tried to improve the situation

by turning this area into a traditional hay meadow.

Having a variety of different plants, you have a multiculture

and therefore you're supplying food

to a variety of different groups of insects and other animals,

so as a result, you have a greater diversity, greater variety.

'Across the field, another team of volunteers

'is labouring away on the riverbank.'

That's hard work.

It is, it's very hard work.

-Here, you can help out.

-Thank you very much. You're up to your neck

in a jungle of Himalayan balsam.

Yes, there is a lot of it.

-Why does everybody hate this so much?

-Well,

-because it's invasive.

-Which means it doesn't belong here?

That's right, and it erodes the bank and upsets the whole balance.

So, is this the most efficient way to get rid of it, hand pulling it?

Yes, it is.

-We have to leave it in place, of course, once we pull it.

-Right.

Um, we're not permitted to move it.

But it helps to prevent it from seeding and spreading further.

Very good. And you've got volunteers here who are lending a hand.

What on earth would make you two boys come here

and spend a day volunteering to pull this out?

-It's Saturday.

-It's Saturday! Ha-ha!

Ah, come on, there must be some payback for you, is there?

-The craic maybe.

-Really?

-A bit of fun, a bit of exercise, you know.

I suppose the notion is,

you're getting out, but also doing some good.

That's the theory.

I'm beginning to work up a sweat here, so that's probably enough.

Sorry!

THEY LAUGH

Hard work...but worth the effort.

Lagan Valley, we're trying to make it better

and everybody's benefiting, so it's a real...

..nice place to come for the family and for everybody.

-Absolutely.

-Have some fun.

The park is a little stream of life running through Belfast.

And beyond.

I'm nearing the end of my Lagan odyssey

and down at Stranmillis weir,

I'm joined again by geologist, Kirstin Lemon.

We're aboard Derek Booker's Lagan tour boat

and we're attracting attention.

Kirsten, look at that. There's a seal.

You can smell the salt water, so we must be near the end of the line.

We're at Stranmillis Weir and that's officially

the end of the River Lagan.

So, from its source at Slieve Croob, 40 miles downstream

to here at Stranmillis Weir, that is the River Lagan as we know it.

From here on to Belfast Lough it's officially the Lagan Estuary.

But I would argue that it might be "officially" the end of the river

at this point, but no-one would accept the river stops here.

You're probably right. Most people think the Lagan's the river of Belfast city.

It goes through the city and ends at Belfast Lough.

But scientifically, what you have is a mix of freshwater from the river

with the seawater from Belfast Lough

and that's why you can smell the seawater and have seals here as well.

I'm just not down on it.

Derek, I defer to you. What's your view?

I believe the River Lagan ends at the Lagan Weir, downstream.

When the saltwater and freshwater mix

and then it becomes part of the sea.

Up here, I believe it's still the River Lagan.

I've been doing it for 15 years and I've been selling this as the River Lagan Tour.

Now you're telling me I've never been on the River Lagan!

Do you hear that, Kirsten? You listen to that expert.

Despite casting doubt on his business plan,

Derek sportingly agrees to take us on a trip down river

where he has seen major improvements over the years.

Well, the cleanliness of the water's the main difference.

It was a totally different river then.

You know, lots of pollution, very little fish,

you wouldn't have seen a seal, impossible,

you were lucky to see a seagull in them days

so it's a remarkable turnaround.

It's amazing the wildlife on the river now and the river banks.

I'd like to see more boats on the river - houseboats,

artists' studios - I'd like to bring life to the river.

That's why I started this business. I looked over the bridge one day

and said, "They've spent millions on this river and there's no boats."

And what's a river without boats?

The perspective you get here, look up ahead here,

-look at the people going to and from work, etc.

-Yeah.

-Your perspective in the water's completely different.

-It is.

And here we are at the King's Bridge,

Ireland's oldest reinforced concrete bridge.

One-way traffic cos the Americans in the war took tanks across it,

cracked it, you can still see the cracks to this day.

When I've got Americans on board, I take my hat off and pass it round,

get some money to rebuild the bridge cos they wrecked it.

Barges, salmon, linen

and great characters along the way -

all part of the magic of the River Lagan.

# Floating down that old river, boy

# All my worries far behind

# Floating down that old river, boy

# Leave old memories way behind

# Yesterday's slowly fading

# All my life I've been waiting for this time

# Floating that old river, boy... #