Ventures Hike the Mournes

This past weekend our Ventures participated in a Fingal County Venture event. Our group was responsible for organizing it, so they had no choice really.

They drove through Storm Brian through dark back country roads to get to Newcastle on the Co. Down Coast. They were joined by ventures from Skerries and Donabate. After checking out the hostel, the next step was of course the chipper.

A fantastic game of SPOONS followed with some people being let of the hook. We tried to participate in a Jamboree on the Internet, but unfortunately there really wasn't enough Bandwidth to participate fully.

Next morning we were up bright and early to get the porridge in for breakfast and to make soup for lunch as well.

We were on the road searching for the start point, which turned out to be quite elusive for a while, but elected to change the route to accommodate the weather and the fact that we couldn't actually find the start point that we had originally planned to go from. So our Hike route was to take us from the Bloody Bridge up to the side of Slieve Donard and back down into Donard Car Park. Mary had decided to be our shuttle bunny so that we could pick up the cars parked at the Bloody Bridge car park.

The walk up the hill started off well, but then the rain arrived. As we neared the top of the climb, it started to get very windy as well. We sheltered by the Mourne Wall for our lunch. We didn't hang about as the weather was starting to get worse. On our way down the trail we were over taken by some crazy Mountain Runners who were competing in a 40Km race over the mountains. We got out of their way and clapped and cheered them as they ran past us.

We finished the hike in the Donard Car Park in Newcastle. We were all a bit cold so we went for Hot Chocolate in the pub at the bottom and it was delicious. While the ventures didn't really enjoy the hike due to the adverse weather conditions, they all said that they's like to go back and do it again sometime. That's a positive result we think.