Hawkshead 2021

by Oscar Rowe

In November, a group of Irish M and W 16s when to a training camp in Hawkshead in the Lake District in England. The Irish team was Emily Rowe, Daire O’Brien, Gerry Browne, Josh Hoare, Clodagh O’Donnell, Peter Gamble, Dan Murphy, Oliver O’Kane and me, along with adults Martin O’Donnell, Brian Rowe and Stephanie Pruzina.

It was a 2 day training camp. On the first day we went to some scouting place that had lots of small hills and depressions, it was mostly open forest with varying slopes and a few paths, there were lots of different training courses such as; no compass, slopes, a line course, a corridor etc. Those were all interesting and varied. It started lashing rain around lunchtime so we had to stop soon after.

In the evening there was a sprint around the hostel that the other teams were staying in, there were loads of controls in a very small area and loads of people mis-punched.

The next day we went to another training area. This one was open mountain with some felling covering part of the map, there was similar exercises there as in the previous day as well as an interesting clock relay at the end where teams of 3 took turns to bring a hat/jumper from one control circle to the next. There were some accusations of cheating at the end but the Irish team was only doing it between ourselves so it was fine.

The Irish team were staying in a different hostel to everyone else, this was because we booked late and there wasn’t space in the other one. The hostel we were staying in was a huge building with lots of small rooms, it was 3 stories high. There was a games room with a pool table and a table tennis table where we spent a lot of our time. There were also board games and we played scrabble on the first night. We also played sardines around the whole building.

Overall it was a fun weekend and I hope we can go again next year.