Lough Dan the Gateway to Adventure.
Lough Dan situated in the hearth of the Wicklow Mountains National Park has a fantastic range of activities on offer. Some of these are on site, the BASE CAMP activities and include self-lead activities’ such as orienteering, pioneering, rafting, camp-craft, campfires, nature trail and night hike. Because of our location there is a lot to do adjacent to the center these are what we call GATEWAY activities. They include all grades of hill-walking and back packing, mountain biking, Glendalough Monastic site visit, the Wicklow Way as well as Mountain navigation and Night-Nav on Scarr and Kanturk mountains.
Lough Dan encourages groups to organise their own program and that youth members be involved in its implementation as is the scouting tradition. For most of the activities we have information, equipment, laminated maps, route cards etc. available from the office.
Lough Dan is an adventure location with rivers, lake, mountains and uneven and slippery ground where unstructured play is encouraged. With all outdoor activities there is an element of “risk” and this requires participants to take on some personal responsibility to mitigate danger.
We also have some staff-lead activities such as crate climbing, archery and tree climbing for groups staying at the center for more than 4 nights i.e. for their annual camp. For these onsite BASE CAMP activities that require trained staff there is a small cost and arrangements need to be made before hand so we can schedule an instructor. These staff led activities are really only for groups staying more than 4 nights e.g. on their summer camp. Please remember that Lough Dan is run by a team of volunteers and therefore it is not always possible to provide an instructor but we do our best.
Lough Dan is also run as an ECO-PARK where there is a range of environmental awareness & educational activities. A well as running the center on a sustainable basis using the LEAVE NO TRACE principles we also encourage all groups to “PITCH AND GET OUT” into Wild Wicklow and to connect with nature. We have a small eco-base where scouts can make a variety of bird and bat boxes. We have both a Green-Way nature trail known as the “Tree Museum” and “Cats Eye” night hike which encourage people to pass through the mosaic of over 15 different habitat types that make up Lough Dan.
————————————————————————————————