Camping At Cavehill

Camping At Cavehill

By Paul McCann

Small groups of us used to leave Ardoyne for different reasons . To get branches up the Glen for Bonfire night or to play football up in Ballysillan or on the beak to Bangor and back . When ever we went anywhere outside the neighbourhood we had to stick together , strength in numbers was the thing . We were a good crew . Most of us grew up together and played football together and joined the same youth clubs and went to the same dances . Our friendship was strong . We were the all like one family the Murphys . Mc Neils , Mc Teagues , Hughes , Devlins , Meehans and my best friend Gerry . We were all friends even before we started school . From the day we started school we all began to ride our bikes and play or games and banter and sleg one another when ever we got the chance . We gave each other nick names and as we grew up some of us would break away into smaller groups for some particular reason like a special outing where only two or three would go .This is one of those times when there were three of use who decided to go to one of our favourite places and camp out overnight up at Cave Hill .

We had been saving our pocket money for a month or two for this outing and had our rucksacks ready to go . It was the first week of the summer school holidays and being our last year at school we wanted to do something special that would last in our memories . Some of us felt a little sad because some of our group were moving away from the neighbourhood entirely and emigrating overseas . So it might be the last time we would be together for some of us . We threw around some ideas about what we would do on our weekend camping adventure . Jacky wanted to try rock climbing and fishing . None of us had ever done anything like that before . Another things we wanted to do was to fly the tricolour from McArts Fort .

There would be time for drinking scrumpy and doing what men do when they are out there alone in the wild . The days went by and the countdown was on . There was only a day to go before we were on our way up to Cave Hill . We had to work out who would cook and who would clean . Who would stand guard and for how long and who would be responsible for first aid in case of an accident . That's the way we did things, we worked together and got things done . Everything was planned out before hand .. Suddenly the day came and there we were , standing on the side of the road with thumbs put out . Eventually we all got a lift in the back of an old truck on its way along the Ballysillan road . We spread ourselves like three logs on the back of the truck and tried to pretend we were escape prisoners on the run .

The truck dropped us off at Belfast Castle and we made our way through the bushes on an unknown path to Cave Hill . We found a spot where we thought it would be good to put up our tent and so we made our camp site there . After that we decided to try to climb up to the caves . On the way to Cave Hill Jacky climbed up a tree making monkey sounds when he got to the top . After a while he came down again and we made our way to the caves on the side of the cliff face . There were three Caves we could see but the way to two of them looked to hard so we went to the easiest one we could access . On the way up we slid down the hill about sever times before we were able to make it up there .

We returned to the camp site before night fell and had some scrumpy during the night . Paddy jumped out of his sleeping bag screaming about something crawling into his sleeping bag . In a panic we all jumped up and started to bash his sleeping bag with anything we could lay our hands on . As it turned out Jacky had slipped in a few acorns inside Paddy sleeping bag without anyone seeing him and had a quare laugh at our expense . As we started to drift off to sleep Anto took his sleeping bag and went outside the tent . We found out later he had accidently wet himself in his sleeping bag but none of us slegged him about that .But as he was out there he heard someone calling for help . The voice seemed to be coming from higher up the cliff face . When we all went outside we also heard what he had heard and went to investigate . With another swig of scrumpy for dutch courage off we went to the cliff face to where the cry for help was coming from . We were like night lizards crawling through the bushes and trees until we cane to the side of the mountain where the voice was now clearly distinguishable .

It sounded like a man in trouble . We called out to him .

"Hang on we're coming ."

All of us lads made our way inch by inch closer to where the man was . With the assistance of a small flashlight we were able to locate him cradled between the branch of a tree on the edge of a rocky precipice . It looked like he had fallen from some place higher above . What a surprise it was for us . He was badly shaken but still intact . I ran all the way to Belfast Castle to get help and the other lads remained with the Casualty .

It took me twenty minutes to get to the Castle but some how I don’t know how I got there and they alerted the ambulance service . They took my name and other details before I made my way back to the my friends at the foot of Cave Hill . In about an hour a rescue team arrives and he was brough to hospital . We did fly the Tricolour from McArts Fort before we came home from our camping trip .

On our return I was told that the person we had helped was a British Soldier who had been climbing the Cliff face and had accidently fallen . That week an army vehicle pulled up at our door in Duneden and I was given a box of chocolates as a reward for helping the soldier in his unfortunate accident . We had no idea he was a British soldier and didn’t know the Irish News ran a story about the incident

THE END

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