Where to Stay in Wicklow: Which Town to Base Yourself In

Wicklow is called the Garden of Ireland and it starts half an hour south of Dublin, which is the source of most of the confusion about where to stay in it. The county is a coast, a mountain range and a run of great estates, and the road between any two of them goes over a hill rather than around it. A base that is twenty minutes from Powerscourt can be an hour from Glenmalure.

This guide is about picking the town, not the hotel. Six bases cover almost every version of a Wicklow trip.

Bray: the practical choice, especially without a car

Bray was Ireland’s first seaside resort and it still trades on it. The railway arrived in 1854, Dubliners poured down to the coast, and the Victorian promenade, the kiosks and the bandstand all date from that boom. With 33,512 people at the 2022 census it is the tenth-largest urban area in the Republic, which matters here for a dull but useful reason: it has the most beds, the widest price range and the most places to eat of anywhere in the county.

Base here if you are without a car, you are travelling with children, or you want the cheapest way to sleep within reach of both Dublin and the Wicklow mountains. The DART takes about 45 minutes to the city centre. The promenade is wide, paved and fully accessible. Killruddery House on the southern edge of town has the oldest gardens in Ireland surviving in their original 1680s form, two long canal ponds running away from the house and a hedged Sylvan Theatre, and it is the one paid thing in Bray worth booking.

The trade-offs. This is a town, not a village, and the seafront in August has the character of a busy resort rather than a quiet retreat. Swimming is genuinely hazardous here: strong rip currents run off the beach and lifeguards are on duty in July and August only. And the Bray to Greystones cliff walk, the thing most people arrive expecting to do, has been closed by repeated landslides since October 2022, with barriers up and no through route. The walkable replacements are the Bray Head Loop, about 5.5 km and 90 minutes with steep uneven sections, and the De Buitléar Way.

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Greystones: quieter, and the better eating

Four kilometres down the coast, Greystones is the southern terminus of the DART and the second-largest town in the county at 22,009 people. It is a two-time winner of a “most liveable community” award, which shows up in the sea-swimming culture and the cafés rather than in any single sight. South Beach is a broad sandy kilometre with Blue Flag status, summer lifeguards, a playground and an accessible promenade. North Beach is the shingle that gave the town its name. The harbour was rebuilt as a marina in 2013 with up to 250 berths and a public plaza.

Base here if you want the coast without the resort, you swim, or you would rather eat well than have twenty options.

The trade-offs. Fewer places to stay than Bray and generally dearer for what you get. The cliff walk north is closed, as above. Pay parking runs Monday to Saturday 10am to 6pm at about €1 an hour or €3 all day in the all-day zones, with free all-day parking at the Mill Road Park and Ride, so arriving by car is fine as long as you know where to put it.

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Enniskerry: for Powerscourt and the northern hills

Enniskerry was not a village that grew on its own. It was laid out in the 1840s as an estate village for the tenants of Powerscourt, and the neo-Tudor square is still the middle of it. Just over 2,000 people live here, 24 km south of Dublin city centre, reached on the R117 that locals call the Twenty-One Bends.

Base here if the great gardens are the point, or you want a village rather than a town. Powerscourt Estate is on the doorstep, its 47 acres of formal Italian terraces running down to Triton Lake with the Great Sugar Loaf filling the view beyond. Powerscourt Waterfall, a short drive on, is the highest in Ireland at 121 metres. Knocksink Wood runs along the Glencullen River just north of the village with up to 11 km of trails through sessile oak. For walkers, this is the northern end of the county: Crone Woods, Maulin and the early stages of the Wicklow Way are all within a short drive, and the An Óige hostel at Knockree in the Glencree valley sits right on the trail where Stage 1 from Marlay Park ends.

The trade-offs. It is small and it is not cheap. Free parking in the square and at the Powerscourt car park fills quickly on summer weekends. Dublin Bus route 44 serves the village, which makes a car-free stay possible but not comfortable, since the waterfall and the trailheads are not on it. And Glendalough is 40 minutes away over the mountains, so this is a north-Wicklow base rather than a county-wide one. One more thing worth packing: the midges at the waterfall in summer are relentless.

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Laragh: the walkers’ base for Glendalough

Laragh sits at the junction of three mountain roads where the Glenmacnass River drops off the moor to meet the Avonmore, about a mile from Glendalough. It is a couple of hundred people, a few pubs and a woollen-mill shop, and it is where most Glendalough trips actually begin, because it has the free car park (beside the Woollen Mills, open 8am to 8pm) that the monastic site itself does not. Glendalough’s own parking is €5 at the Upper Lake and €4 at the visitor centre.

Base here if you are walking. The Spinc loop above the Upper Lake is the best day walk in the county, the Wicklow Way runs through the village, Glenmacnass Waterfall is north up the R115 and the Wicklow Gap west. Staying here means starting before the day-trippers, which at Glendalough is worth more than any other single decision on this list: arrive before 9am and you have parking, quiet trails and the ruins to yourself.

The trade-offs. Very few beds, so weekends and the October Wicklow Walking Festival sell out well ahead. There is no supermarket and the eating is pub food. Weather in the valley turns fast. And Laragh is a Sunday-morning gathering point for motorcyclists and road cyclists heading over the Gap to Rathdrum, which is either atmosphere or noise depending on your Sunday. On the plus side, this is the one inland base that works without a car: St Kevin’s Bus runs daily from Leeson Street in Dublin, about €20 return, and Local Link connects from Wicklow town and Rathdrum.

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Wicklow town and Rathnew: the coast and the county’s middle

Wicklow town wraps a Viking harbour below the Black Castle headland at the mouth of the Vartry. It is the county town, it is on the railway line, and it sits about halfway down the coast, which makes it the most central base for a trip that wants a bit of everything.

Base here if you want beaches and heritage rather than mountains. The free Saturday Heritage Trail and the Glen Beach cliff walk carry a morning, Brittas Bay and its four kilometres of dune-backed Blue Flag sand are twenty minutes south, and Mount Usher Gardens at Ashford is ten minutes inland, more than 5,000 plant species laid out along the Vartry in William Robinson’s naturalistic style, open March to October for about €7. Parking in the town is free for two hours everywhere on Saturdays, free all day on Sundays and free between 9 and 10am daily.

Just outside, Rathnew is where the county’s two best-known country houses sit: Hunter’s Hotel, a 300-year-old coaching inn run by the same family for over 200 years, with gardens running down to the river, and Victorian Tinakilly House, built for the captain who laid the first transatlantic cable. Neither is a budget stay, but both are the kind of place people book Wicklow for.

The trade-offs. Wicklow Gaol, the town’s headline attraction, has been closed for renovation since late 2025, so do not build a wet afternoon around it. The scenery here is coastal and gentle rather than dramatic, and Glendalough is a 30-minute drive inland.

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Blessington: the west side, the lakes and the Dublin edge

Blessington sits on the N81 about 25 km south-west of Dublin, beside a lake that is younger than it looks: the state dammed the Liffey at Poulaphouca in the early 1930s to supply Dublin with water, flooding a farming valley and the village of Ballinahown, whose field walls still surface in dry summers. There are 44 km of shoreline for boating, fishing and kayaking, and a flat paved Greenway runs from the town along the southern shore to Russborough House, one of the finest Palladian houses in Ireland, built in the 1740s and set in 200 acres of parkland.

Base here if you are combining Wicklow with Kildare or the west of Dublin, you want lake activities, or you want easy road access to the Sally Gap and the high Military Road without staying in the mountains.

The trade-offs. There is no railway station here despite what some listings claim, so this is a driving base. You are on the far side of the range from Glendalough, roughly 40 minutes over the Wicklow Gap, and further still from the coast.

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Further south: Rathdrum, Avoca and Glenmalure

The south of the county is quieter, cheaper and much less visited. Rathdrum is a small town on a ridge above the Avonmore with a railway station, a Victorian viaduct and Avondale on its doorstep, where a treetop canopy walk and a 90-metre spiral slide surround the house Charles Stewart Parnell was born in. Avoca, a few minutes on, has Ireland’s oldest working mill and the Meeting of the Waters.

For hillwalkers, Glenmalure is the serious option: a long, remote glacial valley that is the main base for Lugnaquilla, the highest peak in Ireland outside Kerry. The An Óige hostel at the head of the valley is a former hunting lodge of 1903 with no electricity and no running water, open in summer and booked through the An Óige head office because there is no phone at the building. The Glenmalure Lodge down at the Drumgoff crossroads is the valley’s pub and the obvious place to eat. Parking is free at the lodge and at Baravore.

The trade-off for all three: you are a long way from the coast and from Dublin, and mobile coverage in Glenmalure is what you would expect of somewhere that atmospheric.

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The short version

• No car: Bray, Greystones or Laragh.
• With children: Bray for the promenade and the choice, Wicklow town for Brittas Bay.
• Walking: Laragh for Glendalough and the Spinc, Enniskerry for the northern Wicklow Way, Glenmalure for Lugnaquilla.
• Gardens and estates: Enniskerry for Powerscourt, Blessington for Russborough, Wicklow town for Mount Usher.
• One base for a whole week: Wicklow town or Rathnew, because everything in the county is within about 40 minutes.

Parking charges, bus timetables and opening seasons change, and the cliff walk closure has already outlasted several predicted reopenings. Check before you build a day around any of them.