March 2020 at Aurora
Our camp in the Wicklow Mountains
By Daragh Coakley, Patrol Leader
We arrived at the Aurora campsite, Co. Wicklow at 8pm on Friday the 6th of March. We spent that evening setting up our tents in the best spot we could find. We had opening ceremony before preparing dinner. That evening we ate hotdogs before going to bed at 11pm.
We woke up at 8am the next morning. We split one of the patrols in half, one half to make the breakfast the other to clean it up. We had French toast and beans for breakfast. We began our hike at 11am. We had planned the route ourselves a week prior. We began our hike with a steep upward climb, it wasn’t very long but it took a while due to the relief of the land. Once we made it to the top of the mountain, we began walking along the cliffs. The view was breathtaking. We took a half an hour break to eat our lunch consisting of fruit, sandwiches, crisps and chocolate. We continued our hike, through the clouds at the top, and made our way over to the road nearby and made our way back to the campsite.
We arrived back around 5pm and began making dinner which was burgers. We made a very large campfire and sat around it, enjoying the warmth for an hour. We went to bed at 11am like the previous night.
The last morning we awoke around 9:30 pm and used up some spare supplies to prepare some more French toast. We began packing up our tents and bringing our supplies back up to the entrance. We finished our packing before having closing ceremony. We all went home after that. All in all, a good camp.
Wicklow Mountains Hike
By Alastair McAndrew, Patrol Leader
We began the hike at approximately 11am. We exited our camp and went up to the crossroads between the road leading to our campsite and the main road. From there we checked our bearings and made our way up the mountain via some fields.
The ground was harsh and unforgiving and it took a good bit of willpower to get ourselves to the lookout point at which we ate our food. This was a great time to rest and stretch. We checked our route card and our bearing which guided us to the road that would bring us all the way back to our campsite.
The total length of the hike was 10.7km and it took us around 5 hours to complete.