Standing under the front arch of Trinity College Dublin is a man wearing combat trousers, a tight black T-shirt, aviator sunglasses and a scowl. He looks as if he could kill a bear. I approach him enthusiastically.
“Hi! I’m Dominique. I’m guessing you . . .”
“Follow me,” he barks and strides off.
Oh. So that’s how this is going to be.
I have been invited to participate in 24 hours of survival with Extreme Ireland, which takes groups of people into the wilderness and helps them “find their discomfort zone”. Its trainers teach you how to build a shelter, how to navigate, how to catch prey and how to keep warm, among other skills. Basically, how to be Bear Grylls.
Let me give you an idea of the type of person I am. In my final year of school I forged 23 “off-games” notes. I smoke, I drink and the closest I have been to “surviving” was the third year of Electric Picnic, when it rained, I ran out of money and I had only a six-pack of Tayto on which to survive.
The man in the aviators bundles me into a van, where I meet Robbie and Jasper, two other journalists who will know me more intimately than my mother does before the day is out. We arrive at a harbour and are herded on to a boat. The wind is howling. Fishermen eye us up. As we move out to sea I worry about the quantity of porridge I ate for breakfast and the fact that I am sitting upwind of the rest of the crew.
Before too long the island, Jurassic Park-like, emerges from the mist. We have arrived.
We spend our first few hours watching PowerPoint presentations by Sledge and Robbie, our ex-army guides. We never find out the full story behind the name Sledge, only that it involved “doing something a civvie wouldn’t do” with a sledgehammer. Comforting.
Rule of three
We learn basic survival skills, such as the “rule of three”. You can survive for three minutes without oxygen, for three hours without shelter, for three days without water and for three weeks without food. My tummy rumbles. Every so often Sledge screams, out of the blue, for us to “stand up!” or “get off the ground!” He is preparing us for what is to come.
After the presentations we are led outside with our backpacks. “Line up!” Robbie roars. We shuffle into a line, thinking this is all quite amusing. “Now strip!” he howls. Suddenly it isn’t amusing any more. I just look at him, waiting to see what is going to happen next. “You heard me. Strip off and into the sea.” I look to Robbie, on my right, then to Jasper, on my left. Sledge is getting angrier. “WHAT. ARE. YOU. WAITING. FOR?” The lads begin stripping.
I’m not as well behaved. “Really?” I ask. “Me too? Are you serious?” He is.
Robbie and Jasper are already in their boxers, running down to the ocean in the lashing rain. Sledge stands over me, shouting that the longer I take, the longer he is going to make me stay in the water.
I’m thinking that I’m wearing very old, greying knickers, and that the elastic is gone in them, and that there is a very real danger of them falling down if I have to run. But with Sledge still shouting, I find myself running into the freezing cold sea, hanging on to my granny pants for dear life.
Because of my “princess performance” I have to do an extra five minutes hyperventilating/doggy-paddling.
We can take one “luxury item” from our bags, then we have to move. I grab my cigarettes. We spend the afternoon mostly walking up and down large, muddy hills. As darkness falls we are marched to our camping spot. We’re handed a bag of army rations, a few sheets of tarpaulin, and storm matches. We collect gorse to burn for a fire, make tent pins from twigs, and have a long debate about the optimum angle at which rain will fall off our lean-to rather than into it. I have never been so proud as I am of our makeshift home.
Around midnight Robbie and Sledge reappear. My stomach drops. We are handed compasses, glow sticks, maps and three grid references. We spend the next three hours wandering around in complete darkness, locating these spots. One is a mountaintop, one an abandoned farmhouse and one the middle of a field of very curious, very large, very frightening cows.
Stranger sandwich
Back in our trusty lean-to we snuggle in for the night. I have never truly understood the feeling of being cold until the few hours before sunrise. I won’t go into it other than to say I became the cheese in a very cold stranger sandwich.
At last the seemingly never-ending night is over. With mole eyes squinting in the sunlight, we pack up and trek back to the harbour, never as grateful for a hot cup of tea and the smiling face of a boatman.
Had I known what I was getting myself into I probably wouldn’t have taken part. But that would have been a mistake. We very rarely push ourselves to our limits. Many of us have forgotten the skills that our ancestors knew for centuries. We no longer even play in the mud or build huts from tarpaulin as we did when we were children.
Now I feel not only educated but also braver. I know I am capable of more than I realised. The next rowdy queue for Pygmalion will be a breeze.
