The towpath had assumed a new identity and had morphed into something quite different: it was used as an amenity area for walkers, as a courting place by the more romantically inclined, but for us kids it was an adventure playground.

Starting from the old arched east gateway of the Barracks and travelling down the short path to the canal bank, the first place of interest to us children was that part of the canal known to us simply as “The Steps”. The ‘steps’ were a stepped edge to the canal bank that was a favourite play area; it may have been stepped down like this at some time to facilitate the loading and unloading of the canal boats.

Across on the other side of the canal from the ‘steps’ was a place that to me as a young boy was always strange and menacing. It was my Minas Morgul, my own personal dark tower; a strange brooding place of mystery.  This imaginative mental picture that I had created for myself was because I could see the top of the old red-brick turbine house rising above the trees on the far bank of the canal.  This old building was located partially astride the Clanrye River which flowed parallel to the canal at this point. There was also a very large weir located here and I could hear the roar of the tortured river water as it tumbled across the weir and through the turbine house.

This part of the Clanrye River is the farthest inland point at which the river is tidal. An outlet from the river here was the beginning of an old millrace that flowed most of the way through the town ending its journey back once more in the Clanrye near Ballybot bridge in the town centre.

It was always difficult for us as children to cross the canal and the river at this point so therefore that old turbine house, unassailable to us behind its bastion of trees and water-filled moats shall always remain an unexplored and mysterious place in my mind.