Gaisce, also known as 'The Presidents Award' is a personal development programme that is a direct challenge from the President to all young people aged 15-25 to dream big and fulfill their potential. President Micheal D.Higgins is the proud patron of Gaisce.
We were extremely lucky to have been given this invaluable opportunity by the school, as many schools are not offered this opportunity. To complete the Bronze Gaisce Award, it was required that we took part in 13 hours of various activities:
- 13 hours of community involvement
- 13 hours toward developing a personal skill
- 13 hours of physical recreation
- An extra 13 hours towards one of the mentioned activities
- And finally to take part in an adventure activity. For us, our adventure activity was our Hike!
My activities were...
- Choir (13 weeks)
- Speech and Drama (13 weeks)
- Athletics (26 weeks)
Our Hike was held in the Wicklow Mountains.... It was definitely an experience! We stayed at Kippure Lodge.
We left school at approx. 2pm on Friday evening and boarded our bus to Wicklow. The bus journey was surprisingly short, we arrived in Wicklow in no time! As soon as we arrived we were divided into houses, where we unloaded our bursting bags of food into the fridge. We were then summoned into the courtyard where we received a quick introductory speech from the leaders and then off we went!
The First hour of our Hike went smoothly enough... it was the other four that killed me! We were walking almost vertically from stone to stone to reach the top of the mountain. Through the blistering heat, we soldiered on! The mountain seemed almost never ending! We reached many "Fake Tops" before we reached the real top. At the top we found a huge Court Cairn, We investigated what was inside to realize it was just a narrow corridor in which you had to climb through to emerge at the other side of the stones.
At the end of the Hike, we crawled back inside to our houses where we prepared our evening meal! Luckily Eve's mam had already made us a delicious Pasta Bake and all we had to do was pop it in the oven! We had the pasta bake and two pizzas for dinner, along with a yummy cake and sweets, we felt we needed to replenish our energy! We then watched TV and chatted for the night.
Bright and Early we arose from our slumber! And headed off for high rope activities and Part 2 of our hike. The high rope activities were great craic besides the actual climbing the rope part! After the high rope we began our hike. We were dropped off by a van at the foot of a mountain in the pouring sleet in below freezing temperatures began our walk up the mountain. Within ten minutes the heavy sleet had turned to snow. We hiked up and down that steep mountain for five hours in the snow! agh! Words cannot describe how truly cold it was up there! My runners were turning to ice and my hands and feet were numb. We were even too cold to stop and eat in case we froze on the spot... we ended up eating our lunch in an illuminous parachute pod thing which covered our upper bodies but left our feet to freeze. Ah! It was an experience!
I was never happier to be home in my life! Overall though it was a great trip! It was by far one of the hardest things i've ever had to do but it was definitely very rewarding! ;)
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