One of our students has a sporting injury flare up and he wouldn’t be able to do the 12km hike the next day. We hoped that he would get better overnight, but that just didn’t happen. So Gary, our intrepid leader, put his capable brain to work. He spoke to other campers at Johanna Beach and, within only a few minutes, had arranged for someone from the Community Emergency Response Team to help us out. They are a bit like the ambulance service, but run by volunteers. In areas like this, an full ambulance can take an hour to get there and these terrific people do lots of the smaller stuff.
I drew the short straw, so the students and I crammed into a cars with our packs and all the tents. Helen then drove us to the camp-site, bless her cotton socks. There were two campsites, one on the east side of the river and one on the west. As I understood it, we were booked in at the one over the river. Once, we arrived at the site over the river, Eire River East, the student had a good sleep and I spent four hours putting up all those tents.
Once they were up, I sat under a tree and read David Sederis’ book, Naked. After a while, I got bored and took myself for a bit of a wander.
Finally, the other students arrived. It was nice to see them, but not to discover that I had put all the tents up on the wrong side of the river. On the bright side, the tents were now dry and they just pulled out the pegs and moved them to the proper spot. Later in the afternoon, a few of us went for a paddle in a shallow bit of the river and that was lovely, too.
The day ended with the teachers dinner. We joined four men who were walking the whole eight-day trail. Again, Gary provided us with a top meal and he’d even brought small cakes for one of the teachers who was having her birthday that day. At nine o’clock, sunburned and tired, I crawled into bed and went straight to sleep.
22:00
