dingle 2008

Dingle was great :) Despite the horrible weather, lashing rain and spending about double the time in the hostel as the years previous!

So Friday I left from work to meet everyone, I had my backpacks at work, and my co-workers laughed at me and all my gear. I had my medium hikng backpack with my knee brace and boots attached on the back and then my regular backpack with clothes/food for the weekend. So of course it is raining, not the most fun way to start the weekend. It poured the entire bus ride to Dingle, and it takes like 3.5 hours. We get to the hostel and it is lashing, seriously pouring!! So we all started cooking dinner, and just sitting around and getting out the alcohol and talking and exploring the new hostel. They had an adorable cat, who sat on my lap for a while on Friday night (which I shouldn't have, because my eyes were KILLING me!) I know I shouldn't play with cats, without my allergery meds, but I can't help it. So then the evenings fun started, the guys had brought a guitar and bodhran (my favourite of all irish trad instruments) and so they were playing and we were singing. And then the crazy started. This weekend was the hair straightening. One of the guys Brian (Tim) has this longish curly hair, and we have been joking around about straightening it, and so one of the girls brought her straightener so we could. So we straightened 3 of the lads hair. It was quite amusing!! After a while we went into the table traversing, which is always fun! and then the cardboard box game, and then we continued to do all of those crazy little games we always do in Dingle. So then more singing and just hanging out talking.. I was up until 4am, (seriously tired at this stage, I'm not as young as I once was) and there were still a handfull of people up. Friday night is a little quieter than Saturday, like I had 2 bottles of cider and most people only had a few cans.. We save the hard alcohol/large quantities of alcohol for Saturday evening, when most people only get like 2 hours of sleep if any!.

So Saturday we wake up around 8 to be ready for the bus which is coming a little after 9 to take us to the mountain. And the weather was still ok, the forecast wasn't the best. So we went off to Brandon (my favourite of all Irish mountains) and we were going the pilgrim path up and then coming down along the cliffs. This is where I took my favourite Ireland photo when I studied abroad, coming down along the coast and the sheep... So were hiking and the weather is still ok, we start getting in the clouds, slightly misty.. meh, nothing unusual... a little higher, ohh, its windy... now it is actually raining.. must put on rain jacket.... wow, its getting really windy... a little higher... seriously wind. it is getting hard to walk... ok now it is seriously raining, time for the waterproof pants... ok, i'm ready to turn around, this weather is ridiculous. wind you are blowing me around a little too much, and now it is hailing....

I was never so glad to hear that we were turning around, but luckily going up the wind was at our backs... so going down it was in our faces, and i had my hat half covering my face, to try to avoid the hail/rain. It was nice when we got down lower where the wind wasn't so ridiculous and it was just normal rain. But I was so cold. So relieved when we reached the point where the bus was picking us up, I was starting to feel my body again! The shower was amazing, I didn't want to get out of the warm water!! Then we spent the afternoon just relaxing around the hostel, talking, sitting by the fire... a few people went to the climbing wall, but as I haven't climbed in 3 months I would be completely out of shape and it wasn't worth paying 10e. So I walked into Dingle town with a few people, and of course it started POURING!! but it was fun to see the town and to walk into a few shops as I have never been to the town, it is such a great place! Saturday night after dinner was fun. I was drinking a bottle of wine :) I started playing a game of kings with a bunch of the people, the guys were playing music again and just the usual merriment. The game of kings was intense, we actually used a king cup, but it wasn't like wac where if you pulled the king you poured some of your drink into the cup, and the 4th king would drink it..(which we rarely did anyway, because we were nicer than that and didn't want t infict that on each other) nononono, if you pulled a king, everyone playing poured some of their drink into the cup and you would have to drink it... so there were 4 of these lovely opportunities per game. Luckily in the 3 games I played I only pulled one king... the drink was lovely... lots of different beer, a few ciders and then a red wine and my white zin. I chugggged that as fast as I could, as I didn't want to have to drink it twice! It wasn't as bad as it could have been, but ugggggh! So the game continued for a lot longer, hahaha, but i joined in on a few conversations and then sang along with the guitars for a while, then we all ended up in one of the small rooms and were seeing how many people could fit into the closet, then doing other random things, more singing, lots more singing! and then talking, dance offs, more singing, and what do you know, it is 4am.. so I was dying again, half asleep the last 15 minutes, so around 4.15 I head off and there were a ton of people still running about, singing and being crazy.

Sunday morning woke up, enjoyed breakfast and sitting around talking, laughing about the debauchery from the night before, and then a bunch of us walked into town again for Ireland's best ice cream. It was pretty amazing, but they were sooo small and expensive! All I really want is a gigantic thing of Coldstone or Cliffs (the best ice cream in the world in Jersey) And it was kinda raining walking into town... but on the way home the skies opened up, like seriously. I was soaked in about 3 seconds. Not cool. So back to the hostel, packed and cleaned up and then while waiting for the bus we had another singing session. So got home a little after 8, threw both my bags contents in the wash as everything was soaked!, and the rest is now sitting in a huge pile on my floor. My room is a disaster zone, seriously need to clean!! That is the only bad part about coming back from a mountaineering weekend, trying to dry out everything!

So that is the Dingle weekend. Crazy fun, but great. Though it was the quietest of all three years it still was great. I was quite disappointed that the weather was so shit, and that there was no climbing outside on Sunday, Dunsheen is my favourite place to climb! And I look forward to Dingle for the climbing. Oh well.

Back to the usualness, can't believe it is already the 10th of November! Where is time going???

Oh loved work today, because they were playing a TON of Elton John on the radio. They announced today he is playing in Ireland in June so the radio was giving away tickets everytime they played a song. So they were pretty much playing a song every hour. LOVED it!

Off to make dinner and get my life organised!