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Survival Skills
If you were dropped in the wilds of Connemara for a week, would you survive? Could you knock up a shelter, start a fire and catch a rabbit for your tea? Or would rescue workers find you sobbing on a rock seven days later, delirious with hunger, gnawing the back end of a sheep?...
If you think that your endurance skills could use a bit of updating, then consider a survival course. With the proliferation of reality TV shows like Survivor and Treasure Island, survival courses are enjoying a boom period. These courses teach you how to stay alive in harsh, inhospitable environments, so residents of Leitrim are flocking to them in droves. You will learn how to start a fire without matches, set up camp, cook outdoors and cope in an emergency situation. Once you know some basic survival skills, then you can move on to some more extreme activities. Numerous centres around the country offer abseiling, water skiing, rock climbing and more.
A typical weekend course will see you put into a group of 4-15 people in a remote wood and there is no chance of voting anyone out. However, you are free to tell team members how much you would like to. Your Lord of the Flies experience will involve the group building a shelter and catching and cooking at least one meal, which may or may not be provided. You will also be given tasks to complete, such as tracking and orienteering. Survival courses are particularly popular amongst companies for encouraging corporate teambuilding. Employers hope to bring their minions closer together to improve productivity, while employees find catharsis from accidentally losing their boss on a remote cliff face. Everyone's a winner.
Successfully completing a survival course will give you a long overdue comeback to your father's Angela's Ashes-type recollections of his boyhood. Catching rabbits barefoot, eating raw turnips and walking seventeen miles to get to the nearest school were all part of a normal day for him and now will finally be able to empathise.
After finishing your course, you will have hardship stories of your own that you can embellish at length. Survival courses teach you skills that, in extreme situations, can mean the difference between life and death. They are also a great excuse to get mucky, go camping, bond with strangers and catch botulism. Just because Feile is over doesn't mean that you can't have fun.
- Caving
- Gliding
- Life of Leisure
- Mountaineering
- Parachuting
- Pilot
- Skiing
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