Ventures - Lone Camp
The venture section had our first “lone venture” camp in larch hill during the week.
It all started in town where we all met up at Tara street DART station. After the obligatory stop at Off Beat for a yummy snack, we headed off to Eden Quay to catch the next bus out towards Larch Hill.
After a lengthy discussion about which side of the road the bus stop was on, we all made it onboard in one piece. Once off the bus, the walking began. After what felt like 3 hours, we took a break to catch our breaths, get a drink and check on our progress. In reality, we’d been walking for 15 minutes and had made it about 500m from the bus stop.
We arrived in Larch Hill in record time…. an hour and a half. We set up camp, checked in at reception and said hello to other ventures and rovers we’d met at other activities before.
We fired up the coolers and whipped up a delicious dinner of pesto pasta. After washing up and despite substantial moaning, we geared up for our evening programme, an adventure up to the nearby Hell Fire Club. Once we’d started walking it turned out to be a fairly pleasant walk.
Night was just falling when we reached the top. It was our first time being there and we were not disappointed. We were all in awe of the view of the city as night fell. Well, everyone but Emma who was “expecting something more….”We had a quick look around the ruins and, after a lengthy photo shoot, we all headed back to camp where it was time for second dinner, this time from the local Chinese.
After dinner the sensible ones (just me apparently) turned in for the night, everybody else sat around camp and caught up with each other.
Breakfast was a sophisticated affair, Tesco own pancakes and fresh fruit. The night owls were a bit tired after their long night so the morning was spent relaxing around the campsite.
After a tense few minutes trying to find signal to open my leaving cert results, we dropped camp, paid the site fees and began the journey home. We finally parted ways in town and headed off home in the late afternoon.
Overall the camp was a lot of fun and I think we all learned a lot about planning a camp all on our own and most importantly we all had a ball in the process.
