Here at Killary we care about the environment and how we leave our mark on it, as a result of this we think a lot about different ways of reducing our footprint on the pristine environment where we live.  Over the past number of years we have been pro active in how we approach the question of how to deal with our waste and our use of fossil fuels.  Here is a brief summary of what we are doing at present.

Wind energy

5 years ago we brought a 15 kw wind turbine from a company in Scotland called Proven, we have had a lot of problems with it and it has probably run for about 2 years out of the last 5 however when it goes it makes a large difference to our energy bills.  At the moment it is not running due to a design fault and Proven going into administration.  We have sourced a new supplier and hope to get it up and running in the next couple of months.

Biomass Boiler

We have just purchased a new 200kw wood fired boiler to run all the heating and hot water in our accommodation centre.  This is in the process of being installed and will be up and running by the end of May, we have already bought the loads of wood of Coillte and it is drying and should be ready for use by June.  It is a lot more work than a basic gas boiler as we will have to cut all the wood up ourselves and move it.  It is not to make our life easier but rather to try something different then just turning the dial on a gas machine.

Recycling @ Killary

At present we recycle as much of our normal waste streams as possible.  The result is that our waste bills have actually dropped by 150 euro on the same period last year.  This is not something you can do overnight but rather something that we have ingrained into our staff over a long period of time.  We finally feel that everybody is now buying into the system and that the benefits are there for us all to see. 

Along with making a difference within our own company we try to help out the local community.  This month we have done trips up and down the fjord to try and collect some of the rubbish that gets washed up on the shoreline in the form of buoys and blue barrels from the mussel rafts on the Killary.  We also have a county council bring centre on our property doing glass and cans, and a separate company who have an old clothes bin.  It amazes us every day the amount of clothes left behind by kids when they leave here.  I would estimate we have, in busy periods, up to 1 black bag a day of left property. All of this goes into the bin and is picked up and brought off to a charity shop one every 3 weeks.

Company vehicles

We are also currently exploring ways of replacing our existing golf buggy, which we use between our accommodation and activity sites, with an electric vehicle or bicycle.  Subject to finding something that is reliable and not crazy expensive.

We welcome any advice and tips from people out there who have ideas or thought on how we can improve our ideas.  Please contact me at shane@killary.com
 

This blog has been a long time coming, started when I was working freelance a couple of years ago. Mona gave me this lovely red cozy killary fleece to wear for the week and that’s what I did, so much so that I didn’t want to give it back. So the little brain went about shceaming on how I could keep it…..

Me: Hey Mona I’m off to the Alps to climb the Matterhorn next month!

Mona: O yeah?

Me: yeaaah! Do you see this top I’m wearing, I was thinking right….that I’ll wear this fleece when I summit the Matterhorn, take some photos and email them to you and you can use them to promote the company, in return I get to keep the fleece!?

Mona: Your going to climb the Matterhorn???

Me: yep… sure am!

Mona: Ok let me think about it…. “One and half seconds later” yea no yea… that’s a cool idea your on!!

So off I went with me lovely jumper, happy out!! All I had to do now was to climb the second highest mountain in the Alps! Five friends and I had planned a trip to the Alps, Zermatt to be exact. But I being the kind who prefers to take on the road least travelled was brewing another little shcamene. I was in the middle of finalizing arrangements to drop a van load of house hold paraphernalia to Belgrade in the ould van, buts that’s a story for another blog.

What happened was I drove to Serbia dropped the load drove around the west Balkans for a month and met my mates in Switzerland, Zermatt Switzerland …. With my lovely red warm cozy Killary fleece all ready for action!

The first day spent acclimatizing did thirty kms, two peaks over 3000m, two of us finished, lost the others along the way. Day two myself Duirmead and Simon take on Pollux standing at 4100m above sea level. Simon being the most experienced of the crew which consisted of him being there once before gave us a crash course in winter mountaineering, so really it was a case of the blind leading the blind. But whoever let lack of experience get in the way of a good adventure!? Some day that turned out to be.

Wow that’s a different ball game right there! Crevasses, ice, bottle necks, time pressures, horrible cranky climbing partner…. I won’t mention any names but it wasn’t Simon!! But twas more fun than I can remember!!

We summated at about half past one an hour and a half too late, they say you should be making your way back if not before noon then very shortly after. As the ice melts more rapidly in the afternoon widening and weakening the bridges between the crevasses making the glacier a weird and worrying place to be. With great holes in the ice that could swallow K2 whole!! As scary as the thought of being lost inside a huge blue sleeping monster was, they held an alluring beauty. Often I found myself just stopped there looking, craning my neck to see more as fear held my feet motionless in the snow.

Now I’m not going to lie to you even though I thought about it! The photographs you see below were not taken on the lofty heights of the Matterhorn but on the aforementioned Pollux. You see we knew the weather was changing and that there was a possibility that it may rule out an attempt on the Matterhorn “Sure who’s to know one alpine peak from another”

“I’ll email her these sure who’s to know the difference”

And that I must admit was the plan!

A whiles past since then, I had been asked to write this blog last year on receipt of photos by Mona.  But a freelancer has no loyalties as we all know and the story of my red jumper has never been told.

I sit here 2nite as it warms my back, a shade or two less bright. As a full and true member of the Killary crew, I tell you this…..  I have new plans a brewing for that Matterhorn

John 'Jonno' O'Sullivan

Devizes to Westminster 24hr kayak challenge (22 hr 40 min)

Where do you start something like this?  Almost 23 hours of paddling through the English countryside with 70 lock gates thrown in for fun.  What kind of person pays hard earned money to take part in such a sadistic event?   However despite how I felt during the race and the days after, when I couldn’t lift my hands above my head, it is amazing how quickly you forget the pain.  Instead one begins to look back with fondness on paddling down the Thames at 3 o’clock in the morning, rejoicing that you only have another 5 hours left before the end. 

The Devizes to Westminster Canoe marathon or DW for short is a non-stop 125 mile race down from Devizes to Westminster.  It is made even more difficult because there is over 70 Lock gates that you must portage during the race, this involves getting out of your boat lifting it up and running around the lock before putting it back in again. The route incorporates 50 miles along the Kenneth and Avon canal from Devizes to Reading, whereupon it joins the river Thames for the next 75 mile into the houses of Parliament in Westminster.  150 teams set of this year with me (Shane Young) and Kevin O’Callaghan sitting among the competitors.  After 3 months of 5 day a week training the start line felt like blessed relief.  How wrong we were!  DW is essentially a 3 part race, 1. Down the Kenneth and Avon canal until Reading with about 50 locks thrown in for good measure.  2.  Down the Thames until a place called Teddington where you must time your run to meet the tide. 3. From Teddington to the finish line hopefully aided and abetted by the tide.  Get your predicted time to reach Teddington wrong and you will have to wait for the next tide which is soul destroying.
 

Due to the nature of this race it requires each team to have a support crew who meet you every 45 minutes along the river where they stuff food into your mouth and give you more water.  It is essential part of the race as you can’t bring all your food with you and you use a huge amount of energy paddling non-stop down the river.  Our food of choice was boiled potatoes, chicken sandwiches, homemade brack, homemade biscuits and a variety of fruit with some sweets thrown in as treats and all cut into nice mouth sized lumps.  Without your support crew you have little chance of crossing the finish line so ours deserve a huge thank you, despite us being a bit grumpy at certain stages.

Kevin and I had been training for this race since the start of January and so we felt reasonably confident and we estimated a relatively fast time of 21 hours which would put us in the top 20.  Having done all our training on the Grand Canal in Ireland we were looking forward to a change of scenery.  The first stretch of the river is called the ‘’pound’’ with good reason as there is no canals for the first 2 hours giving you a pretty brutal start to the race.  It is with relief that you see the first lock gate and get out of the boat to stretch the legs with a bit of a run, some teams don’t look forward to the locks as most paddlers don’t like to run but myself and Kevin actually enjoyed these breaks and made up a lot of ground on these runs.  The canal section actually seemed to fly by as the many locks made sure there was always a bit of variety and before we knew it we were paddling through the middle of Reading.

After Reading and as you join the Thames you must do a compulsory portage at Dreadnought reach where we got some hot soup and we are checked over by the marshals to see if we are still functioning.  So with a change of clothes and some hot food we set of reinvigorated as the night descended whereupon we promptly almost went over the edge of a weir rather than through the lock.  Disaster averted we settled in for a long night as the locks are about 45 minutes apart and each section we spent dreaming about the food we would receive from our support crew at the next stop.  It is in the night section that we are passed out by the eventual winners who breeze past us at around 1 o’clock coming past Henley.

As the night wore on and we got tired our speed started to drop and we began to worry about making the tidal window at Teddington.  We had to force our tired bodies to go a bit faster as we needed to maintain a 6mph average speed to make it.  It was at this stage,  we discovered after, that both of us entertained ideas of quitting and going home, however as neither of us could articulate this to the other we never discussed it and thus we averted disaster.  The next milestone was arriving at Teddington at 6.30 half an hour late but still in time to catch the tide, we had a slight spray deck malfunction which cost us 15 minutes however we were near the end and so tempers didn’t fray too much.  Paddling down through London ended up almost breaking us, as we had only ever thought about getting to Teddington, and had neglected to think about the 17 miles after.  We both agreed after that this section was the most soul destroying as we knew we were close but our bodies were breaking down and I was almost asleep in the back as the long day took its toll.  Finally after 22hrs and 40 mins we arrived wrecked and a little bit disappointed as we had taken longer than planned and had only come in 22nd out of 87 finishers.  We had not achieved our stated time and it didn’t sit well, but it was down to our rookie mistakes which had cost us lots of time when added together.  Almost an hour was wasted with wrong turns, taking too long at portages and toilet breaks all added up to stop us hitting our target.

If you complete this you have the pleasure of a fried breakfast and a medal around your neck accompanied by blisters in places there shouldn’t be and an ability to hurt yourself with the smallest effort.  Despite all my aches and pains and mental anguish as I paddled down the river I will look back fondly on the trip.  In today’s society where we use machines and computers to help us perform almost every available job there is something nice about being able to use your body as it was intended, to strain yourself to achieve something that is so far outside your everyday routine and in doing so learn how hard you can push yourself.

‘’We lose much by fearing to attempt’’

 

 Ever since I read Any Human Heart by William Boyd I’ve harboured a desire to try and start a journal, but felt that A. It would be incredibly dull and B. Betray that I am rather egocentric!. However Killary management have asked me to write a blog on my experiences as a trainee instructor joining Killary Adventure Company for my first season, fresh out of

  The last week in Killary has been a bit topsy turvey but interesting none the less. Starting off with Paddys day and the Killary entry in the Westport parade, I unfortunately was unable to attend as I was of in Shannon bridge training for my race. Quick paddle down the Canal, averaging 10 km/hr for 3 1/2hrs which is what we are thinking we need to maintain for the race. (Link)  This was a lovely sunny day out although tempered by the fact that my way home was blocked by three different St. Patrick’s Day parades making for a long trip home!!  Only