At 35 years old, Great Outdoors on Dublin’s Chatham St is Ireland’s oldest outdoor shop. It has survived two recessions and like a lot of other businesses is currently weathering another. But for many, this shop is more than just a successful indigenous retailer. It’s an outdoor adventure institution that has played a huge part in opening Irish eyes to the endless possibilities for having fun across our little island and beyond. Roisin Finlay talks to Gerry Collins, one of the original founders of the shop who still works there today, to find out more.
About five years ago, a gang of friends and I decided to climb the Gran Paradiso in Italy. It may not be the toughest mountain to scale but at 4,061m and complete with a glacier and crevasses, it was serious mountaineering to me. Like so many before me, I headed into the Great Outdoors to get some kit, all buzzed up with excitement.
As I stood bemused before the ice axes and crampons, a sales assistant came up to help me, asking me what I needed and where I was off to. When I replied, he told me to hang on a minute. Two minutes later and he was back with another guy who had just climbed my mountain.
About two hours later, I left the shop with all the gear I needed but a whole lot more besides. I may as well have just been to a club meeting about the trip. Straight from the horse’s mouth, I had advice on what to bring and what I could do without, some cheap places to stay and what the weather might do. I was also on first name basis with the two lads and they told me to come back in when I got home to let them know how I got on.
This club-like vibe and tradition dates to when the shop first opened and is something that founding director Gerry Collins should be proud of. He reckons that it’s partly down to the staff that worked in the shop over the years – who in more recent years have come from far and wide, including Brazil, Argentina, Poland and beyond.
“Employing people that are really into their sport can be fantastic. They know the gear inside out, are so enthusiastic and they’re brilliant for giving tips to customers. That said, they can be absolutely useless at the other aspects of working in a shop! I’ve heard people like this sometimes advise a customer that they don’t need a particular piece of equipment; that they could make it themselves!”
Family ties
The fact that Collins chuckles at this last statement would seem to indicate this is a trade off that he’s willing to accept and enjoys. And that in some ways the shop is more than just about business, that it is an odd-ball family of sorts with many employees staying working for them for years and years.
Collins laughs again. “We have several Great Outdoors lifers as we like to call them who have worked here for over 20 years. Lots of customers would know Paul Donnelly and Carol Masterson. Eleven families are involved in the shop now,” he states. Indeed two long-term employees are now co-directors – Ken Costigan and Derek Moody.
Perhaps this organisational culture and club-like atmosphere was inevitable given the background and interests of some of the shop’s founders back in 1976. Collins was a fresh faced 23-year-old who had recently competed in the 1972 Munich Olympics in slalom kayaking and had no interest in a ‘suit and tie’ job. Leslie Lawrence was seriously into diving. Another partner Derek Martin was also into paddling and had previously employed the pair in Venture Sports in Blackrock before it wound up. The foursome was completed by accountant and kayaker Peter Richardson. (Lawrence remained with the company till five years ago when he retired. The others dropped out in the early 80s.)
Collins recalls, “When we opened the shop, it was very exciting. People really treated the place as something quite remarkable. Here was a shop selling diving, camping, climbing and kayaking gear. And at that time, all of our customers were the main people within Irish adventure. They were people like Paddy O’Leary [well known on the Irish mountaineering scene and chief instructor at Tiglin], Frank Nugent [deputy leader of the 1993 Everest expedition] and Joss Lynam [renowned Irish mountaineer and founding member of the Irish Mountaineering Club in 1948].
Quickly the shop became a place to meet for participants in particular sports.
“Our dive department became really like a club. It was in the basement of the shop for the first 20 years and that was THE meeting place for divers. They all hung out and chatted about their weekend dives and occasionally spent a bit of money but they found it a very comfortable place to meet likeminded people. The kayaking and climbing was a bit the same too,” recounts Collins.
Adventure central
It also became a hub for Irish pioneers to plan their adventures and as a result is linked inextricably to many seminal moments in Irish outdoor and adventure history. In fact flicking through their old photos is like a who’s who of the Irish outdoor world and a timeline of Irish adventure.
There are old photos of Irish expeditions to Ellesmere Island back in 1982 and 1984, to Greenland in ‘84 and to Changtse in the Himalaya by Mountaineering Ireland in 1987. More recent snaps show Terrence ‘Banjo’ Bannon on his K2 Expedition in 2006. And blind adventurer Mark Pollock, who reached the South Pole in 2009. All were sponsored by Great Outdoors.
One highlight for Collins though was when Dawson Stelfox became the first Irish man to summit Everest in 1993. “The shop was very much the hub for the organisation for that expedition. Leslie [Lawrence] was really involved with the guys. When they went out, an awful lot of information came back via satellite phone through the shop to the press and to the families at home. Then Leslie went out as base camp manager for a month so he was constantly giving us updates.”
Really the buzz and the organisation surrounding the Everest bid went on for one or two years. The team went out to Changtzu in Tibet and Manaslu in Nepal to prepare and to pick the team. The shop was very much part of it over all that time.
“We were also involved with sourcing equipment and supplies – so we really felt part of the expedition. When they came back, there was an official greeting up in the Mansion House by the Lord Mayor. After that, they came around to the shop on Chatham St and all the people from the other shops and we had a great bit of a party. It was terrific. After that, the interest in walking and climbing rocketed.”
Other golden moment that Collins recalls were when Irish kayakers, Ian Wiley, Mike Corcoran and Eoin Rheinisch did us proud at various Olympics. These paddlers were all sponsored by Great Outdoors.
“Because we’ve always been involved in kayaking, to see Irish paddlers get to that level was just phenomenal. For a country with so few paddlers, no rough water and to have guys like these knocking on the door for a medal at these Olympics is incredible. It’s akin to the Jamaican bobsleigh team almost. Paddlers all over Europe have rough water practically on tap whereas our guys train at home on flat water but have to travel abroad for rough water. If a medal had come home, we’d probably have artificial slalom courses all over Ireland.”
Rheinisch came fourth in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Wiley was 5th in the 1992 Atlanta Olympics and Corcoran came 10th in Atlanta but had a one touch two-second penalty that knocked him out of third place in Barcelona in 1988.
Beyond Everest
While these days in many cases the expeditions may not be quite so pioneering anymore, this tradition of helping people with information and to get kitted out for their own personal Everest continues.
Collins states, “Back when we opened it was such a big thing for Irish people to go off to say Greenland climbing or paddling. Now everyday you’re talking to people who are off to the Himalayas or Kilimanjaro. There are always three or four Irish expeditions off around the world doing something. It has become huge.”
“We also run Kili information nights regularly as Kieran Creevy, one of our staff members, has summited there nine times and is an expert. Anyone is welcome to attend the talks.”
Gear revolution
The Great Outdoors photo collection is also a fascinating peek into the development of outdoor equipment and how outdoor sports took off over the last few decades.
The arrival of the first Gore-Tex clothing in the late 70s caused great excitement. Collins recalls, “There were loads of problems with the gear initially. We literally sold maybe 10 and replaced eight. They leaked, delaminated and had all sorts of problems. They were by no means cheap either. A jacket cost about £150 at the time which was serious money. But when you got one that worked, it was like gold dust. To have breathable waterproof clothing changed hiking into a comfortable activity. And when the technology made its way into boots, it meant they were better, lighter and more waterproof.”
Another watershed moment was when the first plastic kayaks came into Ireland and indeed the shop. Up to then it was all fibreglass. “Plastic rotomoulded boats really revolutionised the rough water side of paddling because they could bounce down rivers. I mean I remember the first time I paddled down the Dargle in a fibreglass boat. I literally got out at the end, went home, folded the boat and put it in the bin. It was so damaged it was unrepairable. Now you could bounce down it endlessly in a plastic boat and be unlucky to even put a dint in it.”
And the arrival of wetsuits really opened up water sports to the general population too. But the early iterations weren’t exactly comfortable or cheap. “Back then a wetsuit was just a thick rubber suit with very little stretch. So yeah, they were a huge improvement on nothing at all but they were uncomfortable and still let a lot of water in. And they were really expensive. A top of the range 5ml would have cost about £280. You could buy an infinitely better 5ml suit now for about €170.”
All of the improvements in technology and the reduction in prices, as well as all the inspiration provided by pioneers, has seen a huge boom in Irish outdoor adventure. Collins and the Great Outdoors team have played no small part in firing that movement.
The outdoors world is still a realm that Collins is still interested in. He still paddles regularly, has participated in approximately 40 Liffey Descent and has won 11 category titles. But maybe more importantly, he still takes a huge interest in what other outdoorsy folk are up to.
“What people are up to these days is amazing. I just don’t know how those big wave surfers and those kayakers that are going off huge waterfalls survive.”
