Sense of adventure leads to Welsh venture

Eoghan Powell says he always knew he would never be satisfied working for someone else, but had no idea of the weight of responsibility he would feel once he left Ireland to set up his business Carreg Adventure with his wife Ceri.

“The lack of a safety net is massive,” Powell says. “It’s one of the more scary aspects, but we just felt it was now or never.”

Since March this year, the couple have been running Carreg Adventure in Swansea as an outdoor adventure centre during the week and as an alternative wedding venue at weekends.

Originally from Portmarnock in Dublin, Powell says he felt the need to move to Wales to set up his business for a number of reasons.

“In Britain, the outdoor industry is so much bigger and more established than here,” he says. “Things were right at the bottom in Ireland, so it made as much sense as anything to give it a shot.”

He grew up in the industry, as his uncle set up the Delphi Adventure Resort in Galway in the 1980s. "I've always been surrounded by it and always wanted to get involved with it, but at the same time I kind of knew that, realistically, there are very few careers in it," Powell says.

He says that one of the main reasons he felt he couldn’t set up a business in Ireland is due to the size of the market, as his uncle is still involved in the industry. “I worked for him for a while and learned a lot from him, but at the same time I couldn’t set up in competition to him,” he says.

“I went off and I tried to get a couple of real jobs. I worked in advertising for a while, I did various sales jobs, but I wasn’t really passionate about any of those things”.

After spending a year travelling in Africa, Powell came back to work in the outdoor industry as an instructor and then in management and training and development in the west of Ireland, France, South Africa and Britain.

“I always felt I was going to have to go abroad if I was going to do something specifically in this industry,” he says.

Different scale

Powell says the outdoor industry in Britain is on an entirely different scale than anywhere else, including Ireland and even the United States.

“The biggest adventure centres in Ireland would have one reasonably sized centre, whereas the biggest company in England has 15 ginormous centres,” he says. “And they’re now playing on a worldwide scale.”

He says that although Carreg is not interested in “global domination scale” at the moment, they hope to expand to two or three adventure centres in Wales in the next 15 or 20 years.

Powell stumbled on an advertisement for the lease of the 18th century mansion at Stouthall in 2012, after moving from Ireland in 2009.

“We came in and pretty much immediately fell in love with the place,” he says, adding that they spent the next three years raising money, putting a business plan together and negotiating with three sets of councils and two landlords.

“It was a very complicated process to pull it all together,” he says.

The couple took possession of the Georgian mansion in November and spent the winter gutting and restoring the property.

“We haven’t had a day off since last November or more than six hours’ sleep a night,” Powell says.

He says he hasn’t made this little money since he worked in a bar as a teenager.

“Eventually, hopefully, the payoff will reflect that. But we’re not doing this because we’re expecting to get a yacht in the south of France, we’re doing it because you feel like you have to,” he says.

As well as being an adventure centre and wedding venue, Carreg Adventure also holds pop-up restaurant nights and afternoon teas, and Powell says they are looking into running other events such as murder mystery and zombie nights and Halloween and Christmas parties.

Powell and his Welsh wife Ceri were married in March this year at Stouthall and decided while planning their wedding to explore other ways the house could be used.

“As we started to put it together, we started to think that maybe what we’re looking for in a wedding, there’s probably other people who are interested in that as well, something that’s a bit more relaxed, a weekend-long thing, more like a festival as opposed to a big party in a hotel function room,” he says.

He believes going abroad is necessary if you want to set up a business on a global scale. “You can probably do some of that from Ireland but I think if you’re going to compete on those levels, you need to go to those places,” he says.

Powell believes “the harder you work, the luckier you get”, adding that he and his wife were turned down for four sets of grants before they were successful.

“I think that’s what you’ve got to do, is just to keep plugging away at it,” he says. “Essentially keep rolling the dice until the right numbers come up.” carregadventure.co.uk/