Venture Hike - Carlingford

At our Venture meetings over the a past few weeks, we have been working on the Adventure Skills. One group had been working on Hillwalking and preparing a route card for a hike for the section.

Unfortunately the date that was selected weeks in advance didn't seem to suit most of the members. We knew that some were away, but others were unable to come for various reasons. We decided to plough ahead with the folks who wanted to go. Small numbers means that you are fast and agile and that helps on a hike that may need route changes on the day due to changes in the weather conditions.

So at 10am on Sunday morning, Sofie, Ciaran, and Roisin jumped in Brerndan's care with Donal and were off. It was only a 50 min drive to Carlingford. They wasted no time and headed straight for the shop. Nobody had thought to bring sun cream so it had to be bought. We didn't want a repeat of our last adventure here where one of the scouts ended up looking like Mel Gibson in Braveheart with red instead of blue due to sunburn.

From the shop, the route goes straight uphill. Once we got onto the mountain, we could see lots of other small groups out enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. When we reached the saddle, the wind picked up. We progressed quickly to get some shelter on the side of the mountain. It was a steep climb to the top where the wind has increased again so we didn't hang about except to take a few photos of course. The views were amazing.

We descended back down the route we came up and decided to have a bite of lunch while sheltered by the rocks before we got back out on to the windy saddle. The jackets and hats came out to make sure that we didn't cool down too much.

We hiked in a South Easterly directing along the ridge line. With such a small group were were able to move fast and as the climbing wasn't as steep as earlier we didn't need to take any breaks. It was great to be out on the hills on sunny, dry day. We picked our way back down a spur off the end of the ridge and picked up the Red Loop walk. From then on we, were back along the road into Carlingford town. All in, we covered about 15Km, but it didn't feel like it. We jumped back in the car and headed for home.

It was a perfect day for Hillwalking and was enjoyed by everyone who attended.