Trim, spry and still able to fit into his wide-lapel wedding clothes after all these years, Roger puts his rude good health down to hillwalking. Costs nothing. No need to join a gym when there's the Sugar Loaf right there on our doorstep, and Brandon and Carrauntoohil for the holidays.
All this he's likely to tell you while sucking in his already flat tummy and possible cinching his belt up another notch as he straightens his ramrod spine. Roger must be 55 but you'd never know it. Apart from his thatch of silvery hair, the rest of him is exactly as he was at 20 when he ran the UCD Mountaineering Club out of his locker.
Subscriptions flourished, as Roger was considered a fine thing and very deep because he didn't say a lot (though as it turned out he didn't have a lot to say). Only the really determined could keep up with his magnificent stride, and long-legged Dervla won in the end, wrestling him to the ground on the all-night Lug walk in third year. There have been many ups and downs since then, but Roger reckons that most things can be sorted out by having a good tramp in the hills.
There is no such word as "can't" in Roger's lexicon, and no matter how atrocious the weather, he is good for a six-hour slog. In fact, bring on the wind and rain and the let the bog holes fill up with freezing filthy water, it doesn't take a feather out of him, his personal mantra going on a continuous loop: "I will do it, I can do it, I will do it, I can do it" and so on and on, up and up.
The same approach has seen Roger rise to the top in chartered surveying circles but really he's looking forward to retirement, when he and Dervla can move full-time to the cottage near Lough Dan.
Meanwhile, a bunch of them meet up in car parks on Sunday morning and head for the hills. Anyone can join in, though they have to be competent, and have some sense of direction. One thing that does annoy Roger is people turning up in inappropriate gear, like trainers and jeans. Of course at the other extreme you have the ones who are nothing but gear - specially calibrated trousers with padded bottoms and huge clunky watches with twiddly altimeter and barometer dials. All just window dressing in Roger's book. What counts is endurance, and keeping an eye on the back of the line so that people don't get lost.
As for gear, all you need is a decent pair of boots, a compass, a laminated map (as it's always raining), and some fruit and nuts. Honestly, some of the crowd just use hill walking as an excuse to eat chocolate and crisps and drink a scatter of pints later. Roger sticks to Rock Shandy, two at the most.
