Glendacock 2025

The 2025 Club Trip to Glendalough, also known as Glendacock 2025 took place in semester 2 of the 2024/25 academic year. It was notable for numerous reasons, mainly for being the first collaborative club trip ever, which involved sharing the hostel between the UGMC and the University of Limerick Outdoors Pursuits Club (ULOPC).

53 members of the UGMC shared the 120 person hostel with about 60 of the ULOPC, in a bid to reduce cost and foster inter-university relations by the committee. Reviews from the club trippers found this did not help improve relationships, and numerous incidents, primarily the Great Bugle Theft caused many unfavourable opinions of the ULOPC to be developed.

Details

Date: 14th - 17th March 2025

Location: Glendalough

Hostel: Glendalough An Óige Youth Hostel

Hikes

Day 1

The first day involved a hike around the hills surrounding the Glendalough valley. The short hike left from the hostel and traversed the hills on the opposite side of the valley to Spinc until they reached the road by the hydro-power station.

The longer hike that day was billed as "the torture hike", which involved the same route as the short but rather than stopping at the power station, continuing on back to the hostel via the Spinc. The day's weather was glorious and some deer were encountered, some more dead than others... Despite the enjoyeable day, all hikers who undertook the torture route complained that it was anything-but, and was frankly a walk in the park (or garden, I should say).

Day 2

Hiking VC Joe naturally took offense to the jibes at his route-making, so instructed the still-hungry torture hikers to walk back to the hostel from Log na Coille (Lugnaquilla), which was the location of the second days hike. While the short and medium hikers tackled Lug from opposite sides, the Torture group began marching up some different way, battling through the flattened Sitka forests. After summitting Lug they trekked onwards on the 30km walk back to the hostel, through valley and mountain, following Aodhán and his infinite supply of knock-off Tesco mars bars.

The weather stayed good and it was a grand day out. No complaints about route length were fielded this time.

Climbs

Day 1

The climbing gang headed off to Dalkey quarry for the day.

Day 2

Day 2 was spent in the boulder fields of Glendalough, but some say that they spent more time at the nearby coffee van than climbing...

Events

The Apparition of St. Patrick

The final day of the club trip coincided with St. Patrick's day, on the eve of this holy day, an apparition of the Saint himself was seen leaving the holy monastic settlement (Glendalough Internation Hostel). He led a group of devote pilgrims to the highest point that side of the country. Upon the pulpit at the summit he delivered a sermon to his followers.

On the holy day itself he was again seen preaching to his congregation and blessing his day with some holy beer. He was later sighted again in the holy town of Newbridge