Gaisce Awards 2011-2012

“The Vee" account by Molly Cotter

We headed out for our journey at 8 o’clock on Friday Oct 14th. Bags packed, every inch of our skin covered from the rain. We all got onto the bus ready to go .

An hour and a half had passed and we arrived at our destination. We grabbed our piles of bags, sleeping bags, pillows and boots.  We, pretty much within an hour, were in our beds sleeping because of the extremely early time we had to get up to ensure we could get the necessary km needed for the day .

We ate our breakfast, got out of our pjs and into our waterproof clothes and hiking boots. We were all ready between 8.45 -9 (some boys taking longer to do their hair then others). Bus was coming at around 9.30. We got our packed lunches and hopped on the bus. After a small while of driving around narrow windy bends until we got to “The Vee”.

But when we were out of the bus we noticed that the mountain was totally covered in thick fog, you could barely see 10 ft ahead of yourself. So Miss O Mahony and Miss O Connell made the call and said we would walk down to see the river then walk along the roads and make our way back to the scout hall.

We all thought it would be a piece of cake and we’d have it done in no time. But to our amazement it was actually way longer then we expected it to be. After what felt like days we finally finished part one of our walk, doing 16 km in a matter of hours?

We were all exhausted after our long day of walking, so we spent the rest of the evening relaxing before we set off the next day even earlier. 7 am we were up again, tired, sore and stiff from the day before. We got going straight after breakfast and headed off to the town of Cappaquin.

Going up and down hills dragging our feet, trudging through the puddles. When we arrived at the very small town we stopped for a quick break and decided to head back along. We had only 2 or 3 km to go. If we had gone half way we had done the total 25 km needed.

Luckily as we just hit the half way line on our way back our bus passed and picked us up. We were so tired and were over the moon to sit down and rest knowing we didn’t have to walk any further. We collected out bags and off we went home. We just couldn’t wait for our beds.

A great weekend end and days on and we are still sore, but it was so worth it.