7th Waterford Troop Log 1998/1999

The 7th De La Salle Scout Troop is proud to have been awarded a Certificate of Quality for 1998/1999 by the Scout and Guide Outdoor Award scheme in recognition for having organised and run an active outdoor programme.
The scheme is run each year to promote the importance of the outdoors in scouting and guiding. The troop is pictured below having being presented with the badges by Billy Collins and Paul White.

We had two patrols on Annual Camp this year which was held in Lough Dan Adventure Centre in Co. Wicklow. Owen Griffin was on his last camp as a PL as Gary Deasy was the other patrol leader. All in all the camp went very well. There were a few very tired bodies after the hike on the Sunday but the canoeing, rock climbing, archery and rafting all went very well. We also got in an overnight hike, some swimming and a day trip into Dublin as well as all the other usual camp activities. We also put a fair contribution to the water fight. More details are available on the Group's Camp '99 page

Waterford Treasures at the Granary in Waterford City is a brand new interactive museum and heritage centre which James White

houses many of the artefacts of Waterford's history going back for the last 1000 years. There's some interesting stuff down there although we were all too heavy to fit in the lift at the one time.

Assistant Scoutleader Paul White suggested at a Court of Honour that it might be a good idea to show us the prison cells at the new Garda station in Waterford (it was one of those Court of Honours). We did see the cells and we even found out what it is Paul does all day up in the barracks.

This year the Louis Murphy was held out at the Regional campsite in Ballymacaw instead of in Kilmacow. Getting all the grass off the site was the first challenge and it took a while then to get the tents up and the gadgets started. We had to build a table, a gas gadget, a gate, store gadgets, a fire point and a dresser/cooks table. The test meal consisted of the 7th's usual starter - hotdogs, follwed up by spaghetti bolognese and cakes provided by none other than Jesse Collins for dessert. After lunch on Saturday some of the rest of the troop came out to join in the cyclocross, the rounders, the fair and so on. Billy Collins also gave us his extraordinary rendition of the Bear Hunt at the campfire. After the final inspection on Sunday we found out that we finished 6th overall in the competition.

Above: (L-R) Paul White ASL, Colm Ennis ASL, Ronan Power, Barry Kelly QM, Ian Grant, Peter Blewitt, Aaron Kenny APL, Lloyd Hoban Kenny PL and Billy Collins SL at the final inspection on the Louis Murphy.

We spent two full days in Faithlegg as training for the Louis Murphy competition and slept in Icelandics while the leaders as usual slept on the matresses in the den. Between rolling down the hill in a barrel we managed to put a fairly decent campsite together and we also practiced the cooking for the testmeal on the competition.

We gave one full day to digging up Billy Collins's lawn with tent pegs. We also went through pitching icelandics a couple of times aswell as the table and seating and the gas gadget. Owen Griffin

Billy Collins is always a glutton for punishment and there's nothing as punishing as a really wet MPC in the Wicklow mountains. James White, Owen Griffin, Gary Deasy and Peter Murphy went on the weekend and were certainly put through enough to earn the Leinster MPC badge.

Those handy overnight stays in Faithlegg always have a sting in the tail in the form of a midnight hike over the Minaun, through the Flooded Field and over numerous barbed wire and electric fences. We did however manage to avoid the golf course. After that we spent half the night watching videos and making sure Billy and Paul didn't get any sleep. We also cycled out and we regret to report that there was not many people who could make it up the hill after Jack Meades.

This was our first days training for the Louis Murphy competition so that we could decide who would be on the panel and what we needed to go over at the meetings and on weekends and so on.

We were divided up into two patrols for the weekend - the first had PL Gavin Cooke, APL James White, Dylan Lumley Jork and Peter Murphy. The second had PL Owen Griffin, APL Gary Deasy, Cormac Donnelly and Shane Cooke. We had to keep a log of the weekend and below is the actual log kept by team number 10 - the Hawk patrol led by Gavin Cooke. The log was written by James White.

"Shelters are up and we're just getting used to the tree stumps which are all over the place. We all had a hot drink and po Log Illustration

t noodles and things like that. The hike from the car park wasn't too long but it still had its fair share of goings on. On the way up we saw a dead lamb with it's guts pouring out. That was pretty sick but on a happier scale or it seems funny now we look back on it - Peter fell knee deep in a field we had to cross which was devoted to animals waste if you know what I mean. Join us tommorow when we will include a few pictures and stories which we don't know yet.

Comments for Friday:
Gavin: Soft ground on hike, bad spot for shelters.
Peter: Not a great start to the challenge.
James: Bad spot for shelters but rearin to go on the hike tomorrow.
Dylan: Bad spot for shelters, but alright besides.

Amazingly our shelter stayed up and despite the huge tree stump underneath us we got some sleep. The first thing we had to do was the semaphore and we weren't allowed to use the sheets. Base 1 had a ruin of a house at it and we split up to do it. Myself and Cookey did bearings where we were given the first which led to a jar which had another bearing in it. Peter and Dylan wrote up a map of the ruined house and a little of the area around it. Above is some moss from Base 1 and then we'll tell you about other going ons.

Summary of Day
When we were up the mountains we got lost a few times but we always managed somehow to get back on track. 7 James, Peter, Gavin and Dylan on the Ted Ryan

James, Peter, Gavin and Dylan on the Ted Ryan

.00pm went by and we were still a good hour away from homebase and an hour late for the scheduled starting of dinner. But we still got back and did a lovely dinner of hot dogs, spaghetti bolognese and lovely, lovely strawberries with cream for dessert. It was lovely and hot and tasted especially delicious after we had been walking all day. Unfortunately this lovely dinner was greeted with bad news when we were told by Gavin Cooke that he was sick and had to go home. With the bridge still left to build, things could get hard as he was our team of 8's APL with the PL being Owen Griffin. Anyway we stood quietly for mass while it was being said by Father Tom Rogers. Then came my most favourite part of the day - the campfire. A lot of the sketches were good but ours got a lot of laughs and we all thought we did well.

The Orienteering
The orienteering was an OK success. We hadn't time to get all 15 so we concentrated on the 5 main ones which had semaphore on it and we got the 5 of them. It was tiring but hopefully worth the effort.

TC's Base - Strange but True
On TC's base we had to construct a system to retrieve the jar from a large red box inside a square human danger zone which only TC was able to walk in because he's different.

Knots
The knots base was easy and was over after a few minutes and for the information of the people reading the staff at that base were accepting bribes or at least they were from whoever had what they wanted.

Weather Base
At the weather base a lot of the questions were answered by Peter and Gavin as they must have done it all recently.

The follwing day there was no official log kept as it was mainly the pioneering project which was a monkey bridge. We're glad to say that not only did we get our bridge up but it stayed up and nobody drowned while trying to cross it.

Above: The team from the 7th with the Dead Man and their Monkey Bridge on the Ted Ryan Competition 1999.

At the closing ceremony we found out that we came fourth place which was the best that we had done for a good few years and we were in good company at the top with the 13th De La Salle coming third, St. Pauls came second and the 3rd De La Salle came first.

We somehow managed to cram a load of training into the one weekend. We started off out in Faithlegg by building the Monkey bridge. It turned out fairly impressive for our first attempt although we had to adjust the pulleys a couple of times. After that our so called chefs tried their hands at the cooking. Gray Deasy swore that he knew how to make Spaghetti Bolognese as he had seen his mother do it loads of times. However throwing two large jars of bolognese in with enough spaghetti to feed the whole Group wasn't very successful.

After dinner we were transported in cars up as far as the Comeragh mountains where we were dropped at the base of Knockanafrinn. From there we made our way over to Loch Mohra where we set up our tents for the night. It was a very rough night. Even the Vango Hydra's were put to a fierce test and we had plenty of snapped dome poles and ripped flysheets (more work for the Quartermaster). We got very little sleep that night and we got up around 7.00am to get the tents down before they were blown away never to be seen again. We had a couple of people lifted off their feet and thrown about 20 feet. We escaped back to the forest as quick as we could and had a good breakfast before setting off towards Clonmel. We followed the route of the Munster Way and by lunchtime things had cleared up. It was a tough and tiring weekend but it was definately good practice for the Ted Ryan.

There's nothing too exciting to report about the Saint Patrick's Day parade, it was pretty much the same as usual. None of us were featured on the RTE news and so we were very dissapointed. The route was different to other years although the pipe band delayed us as usual outside the church.

For our first full troop weekend of the year we decided to head to the Mount Mellary Scout Centre which is at the foot of the Knockmealdowns. Because of the time of year we decided to sleep inside although a few people reckoned it would have been warmer outside. On Friday night we got in plenty of games including indoor soccer up in the half acre and Jenga as well as Taboo and a few others. We also played a few rounds of espionage outside. After the usual racket during the night we made an early start the next morning on the orienteering. It was made very difficult by the fact that there was an awful lot of the points "missing". After that we had a quick look around the monastery before heading back for lunch.

After lunch we headed up the mountains on a route which took in Knockboy, Dyrrick and a Colm Ennis inspired shortcut which as usual wasn't as short as it should

have been. We got split up towards the end because we couldn't see each other through the ten foot high brambles but eventually we made it back in time for dinner. We met up with another group from Cork and arranged a few games with them including that old classic - try not to get killed while wandering around Mount Mellary in the dark (kind of like an indoor manhunt except it really was dangerous).

That night we were served up D'Unbelievables on video and we had another round of games. On Sunday we started to do a bit of semaphore and we were given a few codes to crack. We also did some ropework including the triple bowline which can be used as a harnass. Ian Grant is pictured on the left being raised to the roof of the Half Acre.

There was a fair mess to be cleared out of the dormitory and from under the bunks before we were ready to go home and as usual the joke shop down the road got a few visits which produced the kind of things that you should only buy and then leave behind in Mellary. All in all it was a very successful weekend which we hope to repeat again next year.

We can never quite decide if we love or hate orienteering. Many mountaineers hate the sport and fail to see any benefit or enjoyment from running around a forest looking for red and white flags. Why then do so many people spend their weekends scribbling down control points and worrying about the direction of the next re-entrant and about what exactly they will have to do when they come to the 'forest fight'. All the talk about using a pin to copy somebody elses controls is grand in theory but usually a lot of people just end up losing their cards.

With all the above in mind we spent the last wet Sunday in January strolling about a forest somewhere west of Waterford City. It was miserable in an enjoyable kind of way although the Cooke's didn't even manage to find the starting point. We decided in the end to stick to mountaineering where at least if we get lost we don't have to spend another half an hour looking for a flag hidden deep in a bog by an evil member of the Waterford Orienteering Club.

Christmas always fires up a fair share of Group type celebratory things. This year was no exception and there was a mass in De La Salle College which marked the end of the Group's 70th anniversary year. There was a bucketload Peter Wright

of awards and JD even managed to fall off the podium. For our own Christmas party we headed for the bowling alley and McDonalds. Next year we're going to get them to put the cushions along the side of the alleys so that we can actually hit the pins.

It was Paul White's turn to brave the long trip up to Donegal for a tough MPC in the Bluestacks. For punishment he took his son, James as well as Gavin Cooke, Owen Griffin and Gary Deasy. The 3rd and the 13th troops also had teams in and there was a few De La Salle leaders on staff also; so the Group was well represented on what turned out to be a tough but good weekend.

To get everybody psyched up for the coming months the Court of Honour decided a troop hike with all the new Scouts along was in order. The route we chose took in the Coumtays and Comeragh mountain itself as well as the side of the Mahon Falls. We brought along the Trangias and the Hydras so that everybody could see how they were used. As usual two pounds of sausages were brought along although nobody thought to bring any cooking oil. Billy and Colm did insist that everybody brought cakes however and there were plenty of Vanilla Slices and Eclairs from Leahys around.

Above: Colin Power, Ian Grant, Ronan Power and Peter Wright burn sausages at Lough Coumtay.

The Regional MPC is always one of the first events of the year and the Waterford and South Kilkenny Region decided to head to the Wicklow mountains this year. We had about nine scouts and two leaders taking part. There was a few locals surprised and not altogether amused with the 60 or so tents which appeared on the mountainside. The routes we took in were mostly around Glendalough and the mountains (and bogs) surrounding the valley.