sean.casaidhe's photostream

Once upon a time, coming up the Shannon to Athlone, you'd round the bend at the Big Meadow and there'd be Athlone in front of you, standing solidly on it's hills above the river.

You'd see the housing climbing up from the Strand to St. Mary's on Church Street, and on the other side, the Castle and SS Peter & Paul. You'd think "Oh, so THAT's why they built a town there".

Now, all you see is the distinctly bland and ugly architecture around Golden Island and the new Sheraton Hotel.

Someone painted this gate a lovely shade of blue, once. Now it's just part of a barricade closing a riverside field.

Not around here. Many of the old access roads and tracks have been blocked by developers who then used the closed lands to dump the detritus from their other developments.

And by rubbish I don't just mean junk like this dumped roofing, I also mean the trashy low-class developments they got away with throwing up like so much vomit all over the place.

The giants of the Celtic Tiger (even the small giants you get around rural towns like Athlone) have all fallen flat on bad debt and crashing property prices.

Unlike this tree, uprooted and destroyed, some of these developers might get a second chance.