Off Shore Camping on Cape Clear Island – Malahide Neala troop Annual Expedition

 

Good green field camping sites are getting less and less every year. The search needs to be broader and there was a time if you fancied a site, it was more than likely to be available through the good will of the landowner. However in recent years it has become harder and harder to secure that perfect camping site for your annual camp.

There are still little gems out there and this year’s Annual Expedition in early July of the Malahide Neala troop secured such a place. A train journey, a bus journey and finally a 45 minute ferry crossing to Cape Clear Island in West Cork was well worth it. An elevated site over the South Harbour on Cape Clear Island gave magnificent views out over the Atlantic Ocean. We were here for the best 8 days of this year’s summer in 2013.

So the search that had started late last year and by popular decision from the watch leaders and scouts, the off shore site was discovered .Weeks and weeks of planning were put into action. Small working groups of scouts were set up to look after the annual camps programme, travel, food, quartermaster stores, and boating activities.

Every day was an adventure for the scout crews who fully engaged in the wide and varied camp programme from camp craft, to campfires, to coasteering, to hiking to just being a scout. Sailing and kayaking along rocky coasts with caves to see and explore. Such caves teamed with marine life and in years pass, plundered by Barbary Pirates who sacked nearby Baltimore in June 1631. No pirates this time but this didn’t prevent the scouts who bivouacked overnight and cooked local caught fish, backwoods style on nearby Hare Island on Roaring Water Bay.

As in all good things the camp ended, but we all know that the memories and experience of our scouting years will linger with us for many years to come.

Happy camping to all our fellow scouts in 2013