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I completed my first adventure race in my 49th year – and what a choice I made by taking on the inaugural Gaelforce West. I had never taken part in anything like this before. I completely understood the idea of the ‘first step of any expedition’ being the hardest mentally to overcome and didn’t really think I could keep running/cycling/climbing mountains for 6 – 8 hours so never put myself in that difficult place.
However, with all the discussion of the route, the logistics etc. that was happening in our house, in one moment of madness I suggested that perhaps I would do the race myself and having uttered the thought I couldn’t back down. I didn’t run much (maybe twice a week at that stage) and I’m not fast, but I do keep going – the tortoise and the hare – and I don’t like giving up. My kayaking was very rusty and very basic but it never really leaves you does it? Lastly I had to get up on the old bike which hadn’t seen any action in a long time and in the weeks before the event Ijust completed five or six 15 mile cycles for my preparation. What was I thinking……
 Standing on the beach waiting for
So Shane asked me to write about an adventure. Quite a broad topic for sure. It made me think, and as living and working in the “adventure” industry, surely I must have an opinion as to what constitutes one. It made me also think about how different scenarios have completely different interpretation by different individuals. Here's one of my adventure stories. I have a secret. I am scared of heights. No not possible you protest when I say what my job is, when I say I taught climbing for 5 years, you could not really mean it. Well yes I do.
I am not entirely sure how I got through my instructing years. I think it helped me to teach as I understood the fear but of course I also had to climb. Perhaps as it was a daily occurrence I built up tolerance to it. However having not climbed in close to 15 years I had lost it all.
Last year I was extremely privileged to get asked on a press trip to Austria. My fellow travellers were a strange mix of journalists, business owners, and even two ladies for the ICA.
So when we were all brought to Austria's truly spectacular adventure playground-Area 47 and asked to sample their ridiculously large, High Ropes course all eyes turned to me. “But I'm afraid of heights” I squeaked but no one choose to hear. At this point we had only known each other for a couple of hours so my shyness kept me mute. Miss Adventure (me) was harnessed up and pushed off the edge before she could work out how to run back to the bus.I cannot describe the fear. It was unbearable. It was a cow tail system which basically means although you are clearly attached, there is no pressure on your harness so it feels like you are not.
 It was approx 20meters up from bare cement. I could not help but look down, only pure mortification kept my lunch in my stomach. I am not religious but I tried to send my goodbye messages to my daughter through telepathy.
Working in an adventure centre of course, we eat adventures for breakfast, encounter two or three on the way to work and then spend our days whipping more of them up for anybody who’s woken up feeling especially brave that day and decides to come our way. Even our romances have an adventurous twist. Check out a recent marriage proposal that happened on our giant swing WATCH VIDEO HERE.
You can’t live in the wilds of Connemara without encountering daily adventures, whether, like last week with raging wind and storms, it’s the fun adventure of trying to live life without heat, phones or electricity, or if with all that time and space to think, you discover you’re on an adventure all your own that is fraught, as wikipedia describes, with ‘physical, financial or psychological risk’ that makes you ask the question – how the hell did I get here?!
Sometimes that’s a good question, for example when the sun is shining and you’re on a romantic picnic with some good wine and cheese in your basket. Other times we find it’s best to ignore it and instead we would strongly recommend roaring as loud as you can at a mountain as you charge up its path in the rain. Exhilarating.
Mini adventures happen here all the time. One time Jono rescued a sheep from the grasp of some man-eating monstrous surf on a local beach. Shane took on a huge rock in the middle of a wild river with only a kayak for protection.
As Valentines Day approaches, Leenane is full of loved up travelers, new babies and even new puppies! Check out Peter’s recent amorous adventure tour in Connemara HERE !
It’s always heartening to know we’re not alone in our quest for adventurousness and so seeing visitors arrive at the door ready and willing to take on the elements gives us a warm fuzzy feeling. Adventures await for everyone – come join in the fun and create your own. Any time spent in Connemara will leave you with a taste for more Claire Riordan
As happens in December in Killary everything quietens down and people head of to far flung destinations. Looking at everyone heading off to all these amazing parts of the world I decided that I would myself head off somewhere cold for December. After much careful deliberation (throwing darts at a map of the world) I decided upon a trip to Georgia. Having decided upon a destination I did some research on it and found some very good reports of the people being extremely friendly and the food/wine being very good also. As this was mid November and December was approaching fast I hopped on the Internet and booked flights, squeezing in a stopover in Istanbul en route.
A remarkable place with a huge amount of history on the meeting of East and West. The Byzantine empire was brought alive before my very eyes. Lovely place although every Turkish taxi driver I met was an absolute crook.
Siobhan, one of our senior staff, was delighted to have been selected as one of the lucky 23 outdoor instructors who travelled to the French Alps this January as part of the 2013 CARVE Programme. The CARVE Programme, funded by the Leonardo Live Long Learning Programme, takes full-time instructors who are working in outdoor centres on a two-week work placement in France, where they work and live alongside their French counterparts and gain a valuable insight into the way adventure centres are run in France. As part of the programme the instructors also get to learn a new skill and being that it is winter, and they were heading to the Alps, the choice was either Snowboarding or Skiing. Siobhan is also taking part in the Connemara Adventure Challenge on the 11th of May as one of our Gaelforce challengers.
This was a once in a lifetime experience, with an amazing adventure and learning thrown in for good luck!
The first couple of days I was flying, working on technique and bruising my body! And then the real workout started by the third day my legs were in bits! My calves muscles and thighs felt like they had been set on fire! Even my arms and shoulders hurt. I felt like an 80 year old women with narcolepsy – if I wasn’t on the slopes all I wanted to do was sleep! The second week I ended up with a head cold and had to take a day off to recover. I ended up taking the week a bit easier and did shorter days on the slopes. This definitely helped as with my body hurting less my technique improved and I wasn’t messing up as much – which means less falls!
So now I’m back to a very wet rainy Ireland, trying to keep myself motivated to get out there. The worst thing I find about exercising is actually starting, but you always feel much better afterwards! I’m heading to Zumba and body toning class tonight and then for a walk/jog tomorrow in the hail, rain or snow. Hope to get on the bike as well this weekend. It’s hard to make a training plan this week, as I’m worried that if I go outside I may blow away!
That’s all for now. If you do fancy a great value holiday to the snow, check out Action Outdoors.
Siobhan Bennet (Gaelforce Events co-ordinator)
talk/class.
From the corner of my eye I saw another lady patiently waiting to talk to me. When the first lady moved off she quickly began to tell me her story. She said she was 82 years old (though she looked to me to be in her late 60s) and she has been doing a form of stretching exercises called Sans Sessions for over 40 years, morning and afternoon. She had read about them in a book she got from England. She reported that she had no problems with pain, stiffness or with her mobility as a result and was able to tend her large garden. She told me that she was going to New Zealand on her own the following week to visit her daughter – via Abu Dabi, Singapore, Sydney, Auckland and then on to Napier where her daughter lives! She had smooth skin, a happy disposition and radiated energy and enthusiasm. When I asked her how she felt about the long journey she said that she was better prepared this time and was taking a more direct route than she had before! “And” she added “I will be having a little Hennessey or two on the flight as it is good for my heart”. She was good for my heart. The next day I came across this quote from William W. Purkey which made me think of this blog and the many inspiring people out there who live their lives in a spirit of small adventures:
“You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,
Barbara (receptionist & accommodation supervisor) As the winter comes into Killary so everything starts to get a bit quieter as the centre quietens down. However this doesn't mean that we all get to rest as now the planning has started for next year, it is a dilemma we face every year whether to sit on what we have, or to try and do something new to bring people out to us. Inevitably we try something new as from the very start Killary has been a company that survives not by staying the same but by constantly Well it has been a very busy moth here in Killary so the blog has been pushed to the side a bit but as the we start to be able to draw a few breaths it is good to reflect on the season that has passed. In the last couple of weeks we have constructed a geodesic dome, remodeled the back car park of the centre, taken the yacht of the water and put in a new gravity feed water system to The Killary wind turbine saga continues....So finally after 8 months of looking at the wind turbine lying on the ground due to a fault we have it back in action at the K2 centre building, producing clean free energy.
Where is it – what is it – why would it be of interest.....? Try looking at Wikipedia which gives all the history and conflict over ownership. Our own first attempt at a landing on Rockall was successful for 2 of the crew and can be seen on YouTube here. Some say more people have landed on the moon than stood on the top of Rockall.......! Certainly the dinghy is the only craft that has actually landed on Rockall rather than just carried people to the base; maybe Zodiac would like to use this info...?
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According to Wikipedia, an adventure is ‘an exciting or unusual experience; it may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome.’ Wikipedia goes on to explain that ‘the term also broadly refers to any enterprise that is potentially fraught with physical, financial or psychological risk, such as a business venture, a love affair, or other major life undertakings.’
Jamie’s laptop took off on it’s own adventure recently, testing various courier companies in Ireland and the UK before finally arriving home after a two week holiday. Only last week Ciara and Jerome produced Maya, another human being. Chloe and Connor found their way back to Leenane after being lost in the Grand Canyon for most of the winter, Siobhan snowboarded her way through France, and Barbara created what can only be described as a masterpiece on the motivations of imperialism in the Victorian era. Some weeks it’s so exhausting just remembering all of the mini-adventures we have, that come Friday evening, we have to recover over an adventurous pint together in the local pub.
On then to Georgia which after arrival in the capital of Tbilisi led me to the first of many interesting day trips to the Stalin Museum in his birthplace of Gori. Interesting trip lead by a very brusque soviet era tour guide who would not hear one bad word about Stalin. Blaming the west for the failure of Communism and extolling the former soviet republic.
What really struck me about Georgia was the history of the nation and the casual way they talked about buildings or monasteries form the 1st or 2nd century . It's location between the east and west and also its proximity to early Mesopotamia has left it with a huge cultural heritage which it loves to share with any visitors. This picture is of a cave city that used to house upwards of 20,000 people in the early 2nd/3rd century. It has unfortunately fallen down after many earthquakes but what is left is still very impressive.
My story of adventure this week involves a very unlikely adventurer who completely caught me by surprise. I was asked to give an introduction to Pilates (which I teach in my spare time) to a group of people staying for a 'Wellness Week' in a local hotel. The average age was probably 70 years and there was more than one walking stick used to get into the room. They were a lovely group and very eager to know about this new (to them) form of exercise. At the end a lady came up to me (with her walking stick) to tell me how much she had enjoyed my little
The last repair was the most serious of all as the company that had manufactured the turbine had under engineered the central shaft which connected the blades to the power generating magnets. The repair consisted of extending the central shaft by about 2 foot and reinforcing it, our turbine was among over 600 that had to have this repair done........| Killary Adventure Co. Gift Vouchers | back |
