Hawkshead 2022

This November, a group of seven Irish M/W 16s Juniors got the chance to go to Hawkshead in the lake district as part of a Training weekend . The team was Peter Gamble, Anastasia Maglich , Emma Graham, Conor Masterson, Eve Buckley, Eoin O'Donnell and myself (Orla Church). We were accompanied by Stephaine Pruzina and Dave Masterson.

We all traveled over on friday night , the group from NI got the ferry over (bringing a pop up tent that was much appreciated) and the rest flew from Dublin .

The next morning we woke up early and had a nice breakfast followed by the making of packed lunches. Over the course of the weekend we went to 3 different locations for different training exercises . The first location was an open moor where we focused on visualization along with some control pick and longer courses. The weather was drizzly but not as wet as expected. We ate our lunch and moved onto the next location. This location was forested opening up onto an open hillside. Here we did more of the same skills but also focused on simplification. We finished up here and had some of Stephanie's delicious beetroot - chocolate cake.

We headed back to the hostel and made the most of the drying room to try and get our shoes dry for the night -o . The night o was around the hostel grounds and was very fun but hectic and there were some miss punches , the night was finished with dinner, games of Uno ,then offering round chocolate fingers to get to know people.

The next morning we packed up then headed to the last location. This was a woodland with lots of fallen trees around the start. We did compass work followed by corridors and windows. Which was good fun, some on contour only maps, We then rounded out with a few quick head to head courses before parting ways to go home with many card games played in the airport.

A great weekend was had by all and a big thanks to Dave and Stephanie for bringing us, along with the organisers for running the event !