'I don't know how the press got the wind of it but the next night at our meeting a photographer arrived and took pictures and wrote an article which went into all the papers. Our parents of course saw it and we had a lot of explaining to do.'

'I don't know how the press got the wind of it but the next night at our meeting a photographer arrived and took pictures and wrote an article which went into all the papers. Our parents of course saw it and we had a lot of explaining to do.'

Margaret remembers some stories of her free time during her training in the Post Office and how they got lost once while hiking.

Margaret McLoughlin

Trinity College Dublin

1951

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Margaret McLoughlin

Adolescence and Early Adulthood

Life Story

Achill, Co. Mayo

1950s

Our leisure time was all spent with the Legion as well as attending meetings and doing our two hours Legion work on the bookbarrow on O'Connell Bridge we had plenty of outings. On St Patrick' day we usually started our hiking. We climbed most of the mountains around Dublin and Wicklow. One St Patrick's Day we went to Enniskerry and walked to the waterfall. We then had our picnic. Afterwards we decided to climb up one side and cross over the waterfall and down the other. All was going well until we were coming down. A fog came and we couldn't see. Some of the group got down but we decided to stay put . We were lucky as we were on a ledge. The group that got down went for help and eventually the guards were located and they got the rescue got under way. We could see them coming across the mountain with torches and came down for us. We then had to crawl back up. We were brought to the Barracks and given hot cocoa and driven back to Dublin. We ended up going up to 5 o'clock mass in Gardiner St and we were afraid to meet anyone as we looked a sight. One of the lads wrote a poem which I still have. He became a priest and only died last year. We always regretted not calling to see him. O course that wasn't the end of it. I don't know how the press got the wind of it as the next night at our meeting a photographer arrived and took pictures and wrote an article which went into all the papers. Our parents of course saw it and we had a lot of explaining to do.

Irish Research Council for Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences (IRCHSS)

Dr Kathleen McTiernan (Trinity College Dublin)

Dr Deirdre O'Donnell (Trinity College Dublin)