The gods of camping and Irish weather go easy when
I have never spent the night in a tent before, much to the consternation of those in whom I confide this fact. “Oh, we must take you camping!” they exclaim. “Oh, I can’t believe you’ve never been in a tent!” they say. Yet, never has anyone followed up on their offer to relieve me of my burden of deprivation.
Never, that is, until this week when my wife’s family and I were spending the weekend in their caravan in Spanish Point on the west coast of County Clare, Ireland (a caravan there would be called a mobile home in America). Always up for a little adventure and a night out on their own, my three brothers-in-law Brian, Jonathan and Shane offered immediately to break out the tent they have in the shed there and go camping out in the wilds of Ireland. In 10 minutes, we had worked out a rough plan to spend the night out in tents with ourselves and six other friends that weekend. Jonathan had been planning to buy another tent with his friend Owen anyway, and two of our friends, Terrence and Carris, already had their own tent. So we made the plans for the following weekend. Saturday night we would stay on the dunes at Spanish Point so we could go out to the pub there, then on Sunday night we would go pitch our tents out in the middle of the Burren.
The Burren is an area of Ireland that was scraped clean of vegetation and soil in the last ice age and has never really recuperated. The barren landscape resembles that of the moon. Nonetheless, we were all enthusiastic in our plans and couldn’t wait for our impromptu camping party. Provisions (liquor and beer) were bought, sleeping bags gathered, and some even had the forethought to purchase a modicum of food. Anyway, Saturday night rolled around and the tents were set up on the dunes overlooking the beach at Spanish Point.
A Night At The Dunes
I was a little unsure of what to do, being completely inexperienced in the whole tenting arena. I was glad of our location, as it was only a three-minute walk back to the caravan should disaster strike, i.e., we get hungry. So I prepared for any foreseeable contingency. I brought an extra sweater, extra socks, long pants, short pants, a waterproof anorak, lighter, flashlight and multi-use tool for our sojourn. I convinced myself that it wasn’t overkill despite our 200-meter proximity to the caravan. You never know about Irish weather, and the tent did have a reputation for leaking. Thus provisioned, I was prepared.
Much of the night was spent at the pub in the nearby hotel. We had a terrific time. Many of our friends had come up from Limerick and it seemed that half the holidaymakers in the caravan park were there with us. After several pints of Guinness and a few shots of whiskey, it was last call and our little group made it out to the dunes. Our night was far from over, as we lit a little campfire and stayed up till late in the night. Around three in the morning, I said goodnight to everyone and my wife walked back to the caravan park with several friends. I climbed into the new four-man tent that Jonathan had just bought and curled up for the night snug in my sleeping bag, with only a little trepidation at the fickle elements outside. My tent mates were Jonathan, Shane and our friend Nathan. We chatted a brief while longer, but then tiredness got the best of us and we settled into our sleeping bags for the night.
Well, the Irish weather, true to its nature, was indeed unpredictable. I mean, really, who could have predicted that it would remain absolutely beautiful that night. There was a steady gentle breeze, comfortably cool temperatures and not a drop of rain all night. The steady beat of the waves lulled me into a heavy, restful sleep. I was awakened only briefly in the morning when the rising sun cheerfully warmed the tent to the point that I could take of my shirt and pants and doze the rest of the morning in my skivvies.
Survivor Island
The next day I was completely rested. I couldn’t wait to try out my new camping savvy in the outback of west Ireland. Evening couldn’t come quickly enough. After a day of swimming on the beach and generally enjoying ourselves, we set out in three cars to scope out a location to set up our tents. We found a place near the base of one of the Burren mountains, just on the coast road. On one side of the road was a little grassy field, about 100 meters across before the land fell off a cliff into the sea. Several campers had already set up their tents in this field. On the other side of the road was the base of the mountain. A small trail led up into the Burren itself. We climbed up for a ways and scouted out possible locations for our tents, but the glacial scouring of long ago has left this rocky area bereft of any places where a soft grassy spot is more than a few feet across. In addition, it is also deeply cracked and eroded, so that it was difficult to walk across in broad daylight, let alone in the forthcoming night and in the rain which had begun to fall.
We decided to set up the tents on the grassy field, though Carris voted for us to go to a more sheltered area about a half-mile back up the road where there were about 15 or 20 tents set up. We disagreed with her and said we’d be fine here, and began to set the tents up in the middle of the field, some distance from the five existing tents that had been put up near the stone wall at one edge of the field.
This was the first task of our night on Survivor Island, as we came to call our little campground. The rain began to lash down on top of us as we tried to remember which pole attached to which part of the tent. I began to shiver and went to get my sweater and anorak out of my backpack, only to discover the cause for the odd feeling of forgetting something that nagged in the back of my head. I had remembered to bring my anorak and long pants, but my placid night on the dunes had apparently lulled me into a false sense of security, and my brain had dozed on when it should have been packing my sweater, extra socks, lighter, and various foul-weather gear. I began to shiver under my thin anorak, and was grateful that Shane and Brian each had an extra sweater with them. Fortunately, I wasn’t completely alone, as Nathan also was in a similar predicament and we split our newfound sweaters between us.