Ranger Weekend

I would have almost brought my Mum on this weekend with me. But only almost! As I stepped onto the bus, I knew no other Ranger there, in fact, I knew nobody at all. I took a seat. Almost immediately, Elise started talking to me and that friendliness set the theme and the scene for the weekend. 

We arrived at Newgrange Lodge at 9pm.  Rangers from Dublin, Antrim, Wexford, Cork, and Armagh were there. Yvonne organised some fun ice-breaker activities. We were then assigned our rooms, we knew that we were with a sound group of girls. 

We were up and at breakfast by 8.30am. After breakfast, we had workshops on Aromatherapy and Shi-Itzu. The Aromatherapy was very enjoyable as each person was allowed to make up their own mix of oils. In the Shi-Itzu workshop, we learned how to do massage. We also did some relaxation, some of the girls got a laugh out of this as one or two of us fell asleep, to be rudely awakened at the end.  

After lunch, we got our rain stuff ready and headed of Clay Pigeon shooting. I don’t think anyone had ever been Clay Pigeon Shooting before except for Louise. The words pigeon and shooting made me and I’m sure others extremely scared! I soon found out that it was amazing fun! Once you got used to the kick-back of the gun, you were flying!! I was keeping score for a lot of it and there was only a little bit of sisterly rivalry between Yvonne and Louise, which was sorted once Louise was ahead!

Next it was bowling! We stayed in the same groups as for the shooting. The next hour was all fun and laughs, some of the laughs were on me as I tried to improve my awful score by throwing two balls down the lane at once! It didn’t help! Everyone had a laugh and no-one cared about the score in the end. Then it was upstairs to a lovely dinner, during which, we got to laugh at “You’ve Been Framed” and listen to the people in “X-Factor”!   On our return to the Hostel, we attended mass. It was extremely quick and we were allowed into the shop afterwards so all were happy.

Back at the Hostel, we were given an hour free to stay in our lovely comfy sitting room or to go back to our rooms. At 9pm, we all trooped back in, many of us in our PJs!   We had a nice easy first round to our quiz, but moved quickly up to top gear for the other rounds. The quiz was extremely enjoyable and a good time was had by all! The final round was very different to other quizzes! We were given fifty small cuttings from different sweets, drinks and crisps packaging to identify! Some were difficult, while others were easy but regardless everybody enjoyed doing it! The team that won the quiz were the Pikeies in Nikeies! Congrats to them. We then all sat down to watch Love Actually, during this, I made fool of myself again, by falling asleep on the very comfy corner sofa!!  

I had to leave early Sunday morning for a music rehearsal. When my parents arrived, I didn’t want to see them - almost. I had to pull myself away from an amazing group of girls who are now all my friends! I hoped they enjoyed the remainder of Sunday and their journey home. It was one of the best weekends of my life. Thank you everyone who came and to all the sound leaders who made it an amazing weekend loaded with memories for all involved!