gaisce :):)

last Friday was our gaisce trip. We arrived there and got put into our houses. there was only 5 in our house, which i thought was better.

after we put everything away we set out to do the first part of our walk. the weather got nicer  as the walk went on. At the start it was hard because there was a lot of steep slopes but when we got into it, it got easier. What made it even easier again was playing music, i think amy jackson had mint donk tune the whole way up!!!

it took about 4ish hours to get to the top of the  mountain. when we got there you could see right all over Dublin city. We stayed here for a bit where we took photo and had lunch.

the walk back felt never ending because the ground was so uneven and mucky it was hard to walk. And we all found out orla has a weird love for sheep:)) 6 hours later we finally made it back to the houses.

when we got there we plugged the speaker in straight away and started making our dinner. we had pasta bake and oven pizza and chips. we stayed up till about five that night

in the morning Orla had to wake everyone up. We were meant to be out starting activities at 9.15 with our bags packed, but we only sat down for breakfast at 9. Me and orla made about 5 tins of beans and 10 slices of toast while shauna made scrambled eggs for everyone.

We werent even dressed when the teachers came looking for us to see why werent we ready. this was at like a quarter past. so for 7 minuets we all ran around like headless chickens trying to get everything packed away, cleaned and get ourselves dressed. we finally met up with everyone at half.

the activities we're harder than they looked. The first one was the high climb. you had to climb up pole and then walk across a  narrow horizontal  pole. when it was my turn i wasn't expecting it to be as high up as it was, so i went straight up to the highest one. Because the weather was so bad the poles were already slippery enough. and all you had for balance was the rope that was attached to your harness. so instantly i regretted my decision.

when we we're done activities we got to go back into the houses so we could put extra layers on and have a cup of tea to warm ourselves up, so we used this chance to put 4 packets of noodles into a big bowl for all of us to eat from.  Probably one of the best ideas we ever had.

we all then met up in a house where we split into groups according to our ability to walk, the slow group, medium group and the fast group. i was in the fast group so we left around 2 hours after everyone else.

as soon as we got out of the mini bus that dropped us to the end of the mountain, it started to snow. we all thought that it would just pass in a few minuets because it was 15 degrees only two days previous. The start was ten times steeper than the first day and the snow just continued to get heavier and heavier. I was only wearing strides so my ankles were on show and i honestly thought they were gunna fall off after they turned yellow/red.

the ground was so saturated it felt like we were just walking on a sponge. At one point when we we're all freezing, soaked and fed up i went to jump over a boggy patch and missed. my foot went straight in and the muck came over my ankles, but when i thought it couldnt get worse, when i went to move my shoe came off!!! so now was i not only shoe less i was balancing on one foot which was sinking deeper and deeper!!but strangely enough i found this hilarious

about an hour later we think the mountain got into amys head because she  was jumping into any boggy part she could find, for a while we agreed if she got any crazier we would just leave her behind.

a little bit later the weather just got so bad that we had to pull out a mini parachute/ tent thing so we could all sit under it and have an attempt to warm up. our guide also had a flask of coffee that we shared around. This was the weirdest experience ive ever had.

We all honestly thought we we're never getting off this mountain and back to civilization it was like we we're in something like the walking dead, you couldnt even see far ahead of you with the snow.

when we started to go back down the mountain me and jane got a sudden burst of energy out of nowhere and we ran from the back of our group and down the stony path. We kept running until we caught up with the middle group.

here we had now gotten well ahead of our guide, while others hesitated to move on me and shauna just didnt care and some how we managed to find the first group. it wasnt short after this when we got back to the resort, and i have to say when i got changed n to my pj's and was on the bus, it was the happiest moment ive ever had. but overall this was the one of the best trips ive ever been on.