Venture Weekend in Wicklow, but Who Farted? 💨

Our ventures were away at Glendale Lodge over the weekend. As usual Mary missed the turn to the lodge so Ciarán has to chase her down. It was the same on Summer Camp too. Maybe Santa will bring her a Sat Nav for Christmas🎄.

Everyone had arrived by 10 and we settled in. We planned to do a short hike along the Glencree River and up to Crone Woods for some bivvy building. Ella worked on the route card and lead the hike as she is working on her hillwalking badge. Sandwiches were prepared and we were off by 11:30.

For mid October, we were blessed with the weather. Blue skies and glorious sunshine ☀️. A bit different to the same weekend last year when we hiked in the Mournes in a storm ⛈

We headed downhill through the woods and found the river. It was beautiful.

Our route was to follow the river to the footbridge below Knockree. Unfortunately the ferns were thicker and bigger than anticipated and it took a lot longer than anticipated to bushwhack our way along. Brendan took the lead and his legs bore true brunt of the plants anger. That’s what you get for wearing shorts all the time. There was no need to call on our camp first aiders Emma and Aisling though. Brendino is made from tough stuff.

After a few river crossings, which were hilarious thanks to Ciarán attempts to jump (we should have remembered Keem Bay long jump competition), we picked up the Wicklow Way path and followed it to the fabled Footbridge. We stopped for lunch there.

Because it had taken so long to get there, we didn’t have time to head yep to Crone as we had planned so we curled back up to Knockee and took the road back to the lodge. The Autumnal colours were in full display under a royal blue sky. It was simply breath taking.

We were surprised by some horses and enthralled by a 🐶 called Ruby. Unfortunately his owner wouldn’t let us keep him. We took a short break when we arrived back at the lodge and Mary headed out to get some supplies in Enniskerry.

We decided to do our bivvy building in the woods below the lodge. The ventures split into two crews and got to work. So did Donal, Brendan, & Ciarán. We were joined Mary and by Aoife who couldn’t make it for the morning. The bivvys weren’t great, but we formulated a plan and decided to come back in the morning and do better.

By Dinner time we were all starving, but Paella 🥘 with chicken and chorizo takes a while to prepare and cook. It was worth the wait. Since it was still so mild, we elected to dine on the veranda.

It was a very special day for Amy as it was her birthday. We produced a cake 🎂 with candles and sang Happy Birthday to her. After that we chilled out and played charades while Ellie? Roisín, and Sophie got to do the wash-ups.

Brendan and Mary had prepared a quiz for the evenings entertainment. The ventures split into their crews that were formed last week and we ran it Table Quiz style. Questions ranges from General Ignorance to sport to Movies and there was even a picture round and word puzzles. Ciarán and Donal joined in and lost a tie break to Emma, Ella, and Aisling who earned the first points in our year long crew competition. Well done girls. Finn slopes off to bed at this stage but the rest of us stayed up having the craic and banter.

Now we turn to the title of their post. During the chatting, there was a lull in the conversation. It was broken by some thunder. We thought it was odd, given that there were any clouds. It turned out to not, in fact, be thunder at all. In fact it was a fart. There were 2 possible culprits and we needed help to figure out who was actually to blame. We had already asked the audience and we know it was 50:50 so we went to phone a friend. These days that means an Instagram Poll. The results speak for themselves although it turned out to be a lot closer than the early count was going.

There was plenty of laughter and fun had, which makes taking venture scouts away all the easier. As we headed for bed the 🦇 were swooping in trying to catch moths attracted by the lights. There was a fox screeching like a Banshee. It all added to the remoteness of the lodge. What a beautiful place. The plan for the morning was a fry for breakfast and then down to re-engineer a bivvy. Let’s see if we can stick to that.......