The summer of 1966

I did my Inter Cert in 1966.Its present day equivalent is the Junior Certificate.I dis fairly well in the exam.My father did a deal with me earlier in the year in which he promised that if I passed a certain number of subjects  he would give me the price of a tent.And so it came to pass.
He gave me a fiver,a small fortune in those days.With it  I purchased a second hand Army tent in Alpha Bargains in Capel Street ,as far as I remember.
I was 16 years old and my brother Robert was 14 years old.We came down on holidays to the Mc Cormacks in Churchtown ,as was our wont in those days.
For some reason Tommy wasn't working and Pat Rattigan was out of work having been injured and recuperating from a motor bike accident (someone crashed into him while he was driving his Honda 50.).
There was very little money around and someone hit on the idea of having a camping holiday around Ireland.
So myself,Robert ,Tommy and Pat sallied forth in Tommy's green mini van,replete with one only canvass tent ,one only frying pan,one only kettle and taypot,an assortment of blankets and pillows well past their sell by date and just about enough money to cover vittles and petrol.
We had no groundsheet for the tent and could not afford a roll of plastic to cover it with to keep out heavy rain.
And into the West with us.
The first night we spent at the side of a boreen looking down on Galway.We all fitted in the tent and lay on blankets on the grass .Rattigan slept on his side and such was the gap between his shoulders and his neck that the pillow wouldn't fill it and I can still hear him saying "give me the fucking frying pan so I can put it under the pillow and straighten out my neck and get some sleep."
And we all dozed off
.Only to be awoken before dawn by floods of water under us running off the boreen and dripping down on us from the porous canvas overhead.Thoroughly soaked we spent the rest of the night in the van,cramped like sardines.
At daylight we headed up country towards north Galway,and Mayo.I remember marvelling at the beauty of Carraroe,Connemara and further up the County.
All  the time the man were discussing how to minimise the drowning  of the previous night and the scarcity of money to help out.
And so THE PLAN was hatched.It was this.Find a ball alley close to a bog with cocked hay handy.WE did that night and each subsequent night.We would pull up and pitch the tent at the side of the alley sheltered from the prevailing wind.Then at dusk we would quietly take the dry innards from a few cocks of hay and place it on the ground under the blankets and sleep away,Pat used stuff his pillow with  hay to raise it to the level he needed.
At dawn we would put the hay back into the cocks and Pat would light a fire from sods of turf ,put the pan on,do the tastiest fry you could imagine and follow up with tay like nectar.
When we moved on no evidence of our stay was apparent.
The weather kept up and we had a week that still lingers.
The only sour note was when we were at the butt of Donegal and Robert and I wanted to go up to the very top but Tommy wanted to return home.Pat had the casting vote on where to stop that night,He said "We will stop above bye and bye" and home we came.
There is no point to this story only to marvel at the good nature of theses men and how they conjured up such a magical holiday for two gosoons out of nothing.
How I loved them and still do.