This is not the first time this has happened. Nevertheless it is eerie to walk beside a dried-up river, especially one that at other times is prone to flooding.
Evidently (from the second link above) Fethard has a community very devoted to its river and I would be very curious to know how often this has happened in the past. Is it a legacy of the heatwave of this summer or is something else at play?
Séamus Sweeney 
From, Killenaule, living in Dublin and walked our dogs along that dry river bed this morning. An old boy on the bridge said it has happened before, sometimes more than once a year. We checked it back near Laffansbridge too and it was dry there also. It rises only a mile or so past Laffansbridge and so is quite short. I know the Dodder River in Dublin never runs dry because it is fed from quite an extensive bog up in Dublin Mountains. I don’t think the Clashawley has any such source.
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Thank you MIck for your comment – used to leave near the Dodder and its many small tributaries (many of which are hidden by suburbia) – it isn’t unusual for the Clashawley (around the playground the river often seems quite low) but certainly the flow elsewhere is usually pretty good… I came across this unexpectedly on Saturday morning so perhaps the shock was quite stark!
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Quiet a few Irish rivers have dried up this year with the long drought.
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Yes indeed, it is quite eerie to encounter with a certain apocalyptic feel – which is not a totally justifiable feeling intellectually (after all, dried up rivers are hardly something new!) but it does have a . power to unsettle..
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Yes without a doubt. It’s a very strange feeling looking at something that resembles a boreen more than a river and knowing not long ago I spent hours there wading in water up to my waist.
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