4 days hard hiking in the Mournes, covering a minimum 50 miles over rough ground carrying food and fuel to camp-out for three nights. Physically exhausting and mentally draining: and probably even more so for the 4 teenage girl-guides who were actually doing it – I was just watching. Not “watching” in a binoculars and loose fitting ski-pants way but supervising them on their Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award practice. Supervision does usually involve a fair amount of hill tramping, manning of check-points, and climbing peaks to confirm progress but this year I had issued my satellite tracker unit to the girls and so supervision consisted mostly of my sitting in a cafe eating cake and watching a small red dot move very slowly across a computer screen.
Its a digression I know but worth mentioning… 9 girls started on this DofE programme in January, this was down to 6 by the start of the Mournes weekend and only 4 finished (the other two were safely removed from the hill and not simply left to die in a pool of their own anguished tears). I know there are some who have difficulty getting over the fact that this scheme is named after a grumpy racist minor member of the Greek aristocracy (though there is an option for participants to be awarded the “President’s Award” where they believe that an avuncular rotund poet is a better champion of individual achievement!). Whatever the title make no mistake, properly done this is a hard won award and no one who saw these 4 exhausted and fractured young women on the morning of day 2 of their hike respond to their 5k navigation error by heaving themselves back to their sore feet, pulling on their 14kg backpacks and head back into the hills for 3 more 26k hike days would doubt it. My admiration may have been voiced over a substantial toasted bacon and egg soda, with a mug of tea, but it is no less sincere for that.
That said, the weekend was not entirely without hardship and camping acclimatisation for me. I pitched tent in the grounds of the hostel and hunched over a Primus stove to cook a dubious hash involving pasta and some processed meat derivative (chicken arses, horse noses, pig gums, and the end of line puppy farm rejects mechanically extracted and “re-formed” into bite sized morsels). However, post dinner tea was prepared and consumed in the cosy luxury of the hostel kitchen. It was like camping in the garden of your parents house when the sugar rush of all the sweets you consumed in lieu of dinner wore off and your Mum came and carried you back into your own bed at about 9 o’clock. In my case it was past midnight when it dawned on me that my Mum was not going to make an appearance and I would actually have to sleep in a bag.
For those of you who haven’t camped you should know that a sleeping bag and mat will facilitate an excellent night’s sleep – if you are one of those people who sleep all night laid out like a corpse and are content to prevent your head from lolling to one side by wedging it between a wet boot and a rolled-up ball of your previous days underwear. If, however, your sleep routine involves turning on your side, any variation of a foetal position, masturbation, a requirement to evacuate your bladder in the night, a supposed requirement to evacuate your bladder in the night, reading, or scratching any part of your body below your waist you can anticipate a long restless night when the cute daytime snuffling of a hedgehog will morph into the certain conviction that a velociraptor is stalking your tent and only the foetid stench of the aforementioned underwear is preventing it slicing open your tent, and then you. If you sleep on your stomach you must never camp! you will be found in the morning having inhaled your sleeping bag hood.
I will be camping some nights on the Ulster Way and my hope is that a 30k autumn day hike will exhaust me enough to make camping seem viable. If you have made a donation at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/BrendanMajor you have my permission to snigger at my misfortune.
On a separate note, to the partner of the Meelmore Lodge visitor who picked up my green Arcteryx shell jacket with attached Silva compass, whistle, pacing card, waterproof notebook and bag of Harribo Tangy Monsters… he probably can’t be trusted.
Comments are closed.