Blogs from County Down, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, Europe - page 4

On week 2 we walked up sleve Doan from fofanny dam carpark, and had lunch at the top of it. We went over OTT mountain.We then walked down a different side of it and then went in to lough shannon for a swim. I learnt that we need to walk slowly and as a group as me walked down the moutain. This is because there was a lot of swampy groupd and also holes in the ground that were hard to see. Skills that i improved on was team bounding as we went for a swim together in the lough. we also needed to use al lot of team work because we had no help from the lecturers. This ment checking every ones compass bearings were correct Traits that i developed were confidence in the water ... read more

Our first week up the Mourne Mountains we were learing general map skills like compassbearings, map reading and also how to take a bearing for any given place, these skills were new to me so therefore I was not familler with the exercises we were doing. Whilst up the Mourn Mountains I have learnt how read a compass and mark it up to the place that we are walking to. My general map skills have improved drasticly as I feel now that I can confidently read a map and can use a compass well to my favour. My comminaction and teamwork skills improved as i made input into the group that was valued. The route we followed took us from trassy car-park and we followed trassy track untill we got to our checkpoint. then we were ... read more

Greetings from the Irish Republic! Sandy here and I'm lying back on the bunk of a cruiser traveling up Lough Erne. It's about 4pm and Barbara and I are having a glass of wine. David (Captain Kirk) is at the helm and Peter (Mr Sulo) is being the first mate. It's only raining a little bit and we expect sun tomorrow. Apart from the tranquility and beauty of an Irish lough, we enjoyed a trip to ASDA at Enniskillen. Thoughtfully, they have a dock behind the store and you can go ashore and get your supermarket fix. So you jump off the boat, trying not slip off and head for a gigantic ASDA supermarket. They wouldn't let us take the trolley back to boat which we thought was quite unreasonable. We have 3 days sailing around ... read more

Gerry is our 2nd Capt. He is 83 year old retired fishing captain, living near Kinkeel Harbor with his wife Lorraine. Thick, heavy brogue, gray beard, runny eyes and wearing "Dutchman sailor shoes" (We'd recognize them as the forefathers of Dansko clogs), he definitely is a character. A storyteller with absolutely facinating stories, I was glad to have had the pleasure of meeting him. Difficult to understand at times but sat on the bow with me as we cruised down the canal, out the lock and out into the Irish sea, he kept his hands busy repairing ropes with expert hands. From explaining, the material of the ropes to pointing out the harbor seals he was a pleasure to spend the day with. The evening before, he had agreed to accompanying us as far as Cadiz, ... read more

AWOL - The kingpin of the trip is MIA. As the first day ended and the next began, there was no signs of Tom. Peter was beginning to get frantic. Peter was late getting to the boat and when he arrived at 1pm, Bruno had jumped ship and Tom had not appeared. So we went on a Tom hunt. Peter described Tom as a hippie, flower child, wannabe recording artist in his late 50's with long gray hair. He lived on a boat in Carlington, Ireland that had been remodelled into a recording studio. We went off down the road to Carlington to try and see if Tom was on his boat. It was a great ride and there was no noticeable difference from Northern Ireland to Ireland except the signs were not in English and ... read more