Shannon Stone Skimming

Our family discovered the sport of stone skimming during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. After those initial few weeks of near total lockdown, when we were able to venture out with our children from the confines of our own house and backyard and give the trampoline a well-earned rest, our first 2 kilometre-limited forays were down to the banks of the Shannon. We have a secret spot by the river known only to ourselves, shrouded by a young forest and accessible by climbing and scrambling across an array of fences and ditches.

There we waded into the water in our bare feet and savoured the liberating feeling of the great river, Ireland's Mississippi. We took photos and threw sticks for our dog. We waved at passing boats like we were holidaying happily on some tropical island. We talked about building a riverside fort, like Brian Boru's one on the opposite bank. 

And then we started skimming stones.

Our secret skimming spot

I’m not sure who started the stone skimming, but soon we were all at it. The learning curve for the children was steep but rapid. We tried our best to demonstrate to them the main components of skimming a stone across the surface of the water but found that, a bit like explaining any automatic action, such as opening a door or kicking a ball, it was hard to do in words.

So us parents threw stones and our children watched. Then they threw stones and we watched. And we critiqued each other’s efforts and went again. And then we gathered more stones, discussing their physical merits and skimming potential. Over a few weeks, the whole process started to become natural. 

On our walk down to the river, the children would stop when they found stones that looked like ‘good ones’ so that they would have their pockets full by the time we made it to the river bank. And then they gradually and unconsciously learned the different parts of the skimming action, with occasional stops for performance analysis, breaking down and building up again the different arcs of movement involved, the way a golfer might analyse their swing. There’s the stance, the big sidelong swing of the arm and the simultaneous spin of the stone, and the follow-through. Slow is smooth - smooth is fast.  

In the first few days, maybe only one in ten of the children’s stones would skim atall, and even then there might only be two or three reluctant little jumps out of the stone before it hurtled down to the river bed. But those initial few successes were enough to get them interested, lining up each new throw with the enthusiasm and optimism that is only possible with the spirit of a child.

And then we all started to become experts. Three or four jumps of the stone became an acceptable minimum, but the target number became at least eight or nine. We discussed the optimal angle for the stone hitting the water. We discussed the importance of spinning the stone while throwing it. 

And when our pockets were empty we waded out into the water in search of slim smooth shards of slate that would produce just a few more moments of skimming magic before darkness fell. We talked a lot about the stones themselves, in terms of their weight, surface area, thickness and the need for a corner on them that could be used to get a good spin going. 

Slate is one of the most abundant types of stone in our area, with numerous now disused quarries around Ballina, Killoran and Portroe producing a once famous slate of a sea-green colour that has been used to roof countless civic buildings and homes in the Midwest and further afield. Despite being quarried from the Tipperary side of the Shannon it has always been referred to as 'Killaloe Slate', perhaps due to the location of the old canal barges that were once used to carry it away from the area. 

Like all sporting endeavours, we started to develop little superstitions with our skimming, so we learned that saying that a stone looked like a good one often led to a disappointing throw. And we learned that relaxing and laughing and predicting a bad throw from a lumpy looking stone frequently led to a pleasantly surprising sequence of skips across the water. And of course the water and wind were factors too; wild weather produces sea-like waves on the Shannon and stones don’t skim well when they have waves to contend with.

Then I started to wonder if stone skimming was a ‘sport’, however the term sport might be defined. And like all good ideas, I realised that I was not the first one to have it.

So I read about the differences between the European 'stone skimming' competitions (http://www.stoneskimming.com/) and the American 'stone skipping' competitions, the highly competitive world championships held in Scotland (in a disused slate quarry in Easdale) and the United States and the fact that there are world records for both the numbers of stone 'skips' (an unbelievable 88) and the overall length of a throw (the equally impressive 122 metres) - but all of that is for a future blog, perhaps.

For our family, the COVID-19 restrictions led us to our secret spot by the Shannon where we felt (at least until I did some research) that we had stumbled upon our own novel sport. 

And finally, a verse from William Butler Yeats that's to be found at Thoor Ballylee, Co. Galway, a place once described by Seamus Heaney as 'the most important public building in Ireland'. Yeats lived there with his family during the 1920s, having bought and rebuilt the ruin using, among other things, some of our sea-green slates. And along with mentioning our slate, his deceptively simple half dozen lines captures too the transient nature of all human endeavour, just like our own brief lockdown fling with the sport of stone skimming.  

I, the poet William Yeats,

With old mill boards and sea-green slates,

And smithy work from the Gort forge,

Restored this tower for my wife George;

And may these characters remain

When all is ruin once again. 

 

With evening approaching, a frantic search for a few final 'good' stones for skimming