I suppose my journey began the weekend before the holiday when I raided Millets for all their camping equipment. They loved me there.
Over-eager salesperson: “Is there anything else you’ll be needing to take?”
Barry: “Probably…”
– long pause -
Over-eager salesperson: “Well?”
Barry: “I’ve never done this before – pass me things you say will be useful and I’ll probably purchase them.”
Over-eager salesperson: “How about this inflatable penguin with flashing eyes; it’ll come in handy when-
Barry: “I’ll take it.”
Imagine it like the Famous Five (but without Timmy the dog); a sunny holiday that lasted forever, with maybe the odd adventure, and of course lashings of ginger beer. In actuality it was hardly Enid Blyton material. However, replace the ginger beer with cake in milk, and make it four lonely blokes and it’s not actually that far from the truth. There weren’t any mysteries for us to solve either. Except if you include the mystery of my wind problem. I put it down to over-excitement.
I was going on this male-bonding exercise with three friends from Uni. Nic – who’d recently lost his cake in milk virginity, Ben – a Leicesterian, and Toby who was working in Ireland for his placement year and who had mysteriously assumed an Australian accent.
Check in to the flight at Birmingham should’ve been the least of our troubles. Unfortunately unbeknownst to Nic and I, Ben was trying to sneak a gas canister onto the plane. We laughed at his embarrassment. We’d hired a car for the period, which would make life a whole lot easier, and Toby met us at the airport from which we travelled through Dublin and past Bono’s house to Shankill Caravan and Campsite. Pitching a tent in the dark is never easy. Even less so when you’re incompetent and have only weirdly bent ‘comedy’ tent pegs. Because of this I decided to share Nic’s tent. He knew how to put up a tent.
I woke up the next morning and adopted various Yogic positions to extrapolate myself from the confines of my sleeping bag. It had taken me most of the night to get into it. We were due to go into Shankill to find Toby some walking boots, but as Shankill had few walking boot shops we ended up going into Dublin itself. Dublin is exceptionally crowded – I didn’t really like it. Far too many tourists for my liking. We went into a traditional Irish drinking establishment to quench our thirst and have some lunch, then we went to see a movie in a traditional Irish cinema. I only saw the first 10 minutes of the Rob Schneider’s The Animal as it was so dull I fell asleep.
So after the second evening spent at Shankill, we felt it was time to move on. We’d decided to go walking in the Wicklow mountains, so that’s where we drove. We stopped briefly in Wicklow town centre to pick up some postcards, watch a river, get petrol and stare at a girls’ underwear when she bent down at the petrol pump. Nic missed it. He was asleep, the fool… The three of us shouting “Red thong!” in an excitable manner woke him up seconds too late. I don’t really think he ever quite forgave us for that.
We got to our destination where we would camp for the night at Glenmalur and set up camp. We thought it best to get an early night as we’d be leaving quite early to go walking the next day. So we sat down for a meal whilst Nic lit a fire. As I watched the other enjoy their ‘meals’ of various meaty substances I dined like a King on both cake in milk and Farley’s Rusks.
Toby: “How are the Farley’s Rusks, Barry?”
Barry: “Very nice thank you Toby.”
Toby: “Can I have one please?”
Barry (puzzled due to Toby’s earlier refusal of one): “Do you want one?”
Toby: “No.”
Barry: “Well no then; you can’t have one.”
Toby (muttering): “Stingy git…”
So after that we went to bed at half six. It was never going to work. After a brief game of chess, boredom soon came over all of us and the kicking started. Soon Nic was hurling himself across the tent and everyone seemed to have swapped places. Except me – I just stayed quiet and pretended I had nothing to do with it.
The next morning, after my most tranquil ever shit in the woods, we were off to climb Mullacor. On reaching the top we became delirious with excitement. After having our photo taken by a native speed-climber I carefully moved a tiny stone 5 metres to another group of tiny stones and considered the view of the vale. Eager to get to the bottom I began frolicking down the hillside like a newborn deer, much to the amusement of the others. Shortly I realised I was frolicking far too wildly for such a steep, uneven, unmarked trail and soon began rolling down the mountainside. Much to the amusement of the others.
We’d decided during the walk to move camp to the picturesque area near a waterfall we had passed. I don’t know why we thought we’d appreciate the lovely view in pitch black, but it seemed a wise choice at the time. As did shunning the sheltered area merely 10 feet away from the open spaced, hard soil we had drunkenly put the tent up on.
Packing was going to be difficult. Mostly due to Ben’s rucksack full of socks. So we’d decided to put as much as we can away in the evening. Except Nic who was enjoying the wonders of creating fire again. Frankly, it wasn’t the best night we’d had. Parts of the tent were flapping around outside while our shoes steadily filled with water and the inside of the tent became increasingly and worryingly damp. Thankfully it was Sunday evening and we were flying back the next morning.
We all awoke to the sound of our mobile phone alarms promptly at 5:00am to get an early start on the long hard drive back to the airport. Arriving a ridiculous 3 hours early, Toby went to drop the car off, leaving the rest of us ready to check in and wait. And wait.
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