Carlingford Bonding Trip!!! :)

On Monday morning, 13^th of September, we all headed off to Carlingford. We met up at the Esso station at a quarter to seven in the morning. Two teachers came with us. Ms O’C and Ms R. There were two buses, a big bus and a mini bus. I travelled on the mini bus with eleven other girls in the year. Ms R travelled on our bus as well. The bus journey was good buzz. We sang and talked the whole way there. When we got to Carlingford we had to walk a little bit to get to the hostel. We were greeted by some of the staff members. We were separated into different rooms. The twelve of us that were on the minibus together got a room together. We had the biggest room in the hostel. Seeing as we arrived at the centre so early we got to go out on activities straight away. We got divided into two big groups. Those two groups were further divided into three smaller groups.

We headed out to activities as soon as we were ready. They were great craic altogether. When we got back to the adventure centre we had food. We were given chicken nuggets, chips and beans. After the food we went out on the water. That was the most enjoyable part of the whole trip. Some of us went Canadian canoeing and the rest went kayaking. The wind was REALLY strong out on the water so we had to be careful. After the boating activities we all went peer jumping...that was great! We returned to the centre and had stew for dinner. After we had eaten we went out in our two groups again and we walked up the mountains. It was tiring but yet again good fun! On our way back the leaders brought us to a tunnel through which the river flowed. If we wanted to, we were allowed to walk through it onto the other side. Most of us crawled through it. It was really scary. I couldn’t see a thing. We slowly but surely made our way back to the centre in the rain for the night. When we got changed Ms O’ C brought us down to the Chinese take away. We all got 3 in 1’s.

At 11 o’clock we all had to head up to bed. Obviously sharing a room with 12 other girls didn’t make it easy to settle down to sleep for a good few hours! We had a mountain of sweets to eat ad lots of stories to tell.

The next morning, we had to be up early, pack up our bags, strip the beds and clean the rooms before we made our way down for breakfast. After all that was done we went out in our groups again. After the first activity we went for lunch back at the centre. Then we went orienteering with two different leaders. In the beginning it was good fun but then we all started getting hungry and tired.

We had to be back at the centre for half four because our bus was leaving at half five or so. The bus journey back was really good fun and we talked and laughed about the different things that had happened to us over the two days.

We arrived back at the Esso station at around seven o’ clock. Everyone was exhausted. We all had to head home and get ready for the following day because we were receiving our Junior Cert results…Eeek!!!

Id like to thank the two teachers who brought us on our bonding trip to Carlingford and to all of the other girls who made it a very worthwhile experience! ;)

Niamh :D