Overview
In August 1580 an English army marched into Glenmalure and was cut to pieces: Fiach MacHugh O’Byrne’s rebels routed it in the bracken and steep ground, killing somewhere between 500 and 1,000 men. That tells you most of what you need to know about this valley – it is narrow, steep-sided and easy to get lost in, which made it a stronghold for the O’Byrnes from their base at Ballinacor and a refuge for Michael Dwyer’s United Irishmen after 1798.
Glenmalure (Irish: Gleann Molúra) is a 20-km U-shaped glacial valley in the central Wicklow Mountains, one of the longest in Ireland, gouged out by ice and floored with moraine over Leinster granite. Hanging valleys, the best of them Fraughan Rock Glen, feed into it. Today the draw is the high ground: this is the main walkers’ base for Lugnaquilla, at 925 m the highest mountain in Ireland outside County Kerry.
Climbing Lugnaquilla
If you’ve come to walk, the Glenmalure Loop is the route to choose: roughly 15 km and five to six hours, starting from the Baravore car park, climbing through Fraughan Rock Glen to the summit and coming back over Cloghernagh and Arts Lough. The Zig-Zags is the other well-worn ascent of Lug.
Be honest with yourself before you start, though: Lugnaquilla is a serious hill, not a ramble. The summit is a broad plateau ringed by steep ground (the North and South Prisons), navigation is on you, and low cloud rolls in fast. Carry the OSi Discovery map (sheet 56) or a loaded GPS track – mobile signal is patchy in the valley and gone on the tops – and in winter the Zig-Zags can ice up into something you’d want crampons and an axe for. On a clear day the reward is a view across half of Leinster.
The valley floor and the mines
You don’t have to climb anything to get something out of Glenmalure. From the Baravore car park it’s a short, flat walk to the Carrawaystick waterfall and the remains of the valley’s lead-mining past – the northern slopes held what were reckoned the largest lead deposits in the Wicklow uplands. The two-storey granite ore crusher at Baravore, built in 1859–60, has been taken on by a local group under the Adopt a Monument scheme, and is the most substantial industrial ruin here.
Running through it all is the Great Military Road, built between 1801 and 1809 from Rathfarnham to Aughavannagh, with a barracks at Drumgoff – the British answer to the 1798 rebels who had used these hills so effectively. A carved boulder near the Drumgoff crossroads remembers both the 1580 battle and the men of 1798.
The hostel and the lodge
The An Óige hostel at Glenmalure is one of the most atmospheric and basic in Ireland – a former hunting lodge dating from 1903, open in summer, with no electricity and no running water. Its guest book is a roll-call of Irish history: the house was once owned by the playwright J.M. Synge, who set In the Shadow of the Glen here, then by Maud Gonne, and finally by Dr Kathleen Lynn, who gave it to An Óige; Constance Markievicz, Éamon de Valera and W.B. Yeats all passed through. It’s remote enough that there’s no phone at the hostel – book through the An Óige head office, and don’t plan to arrive late.
Down at the Drumgoff crossroads, the Glenmalure Lodge is the valley’s pub and the obvious place for a meal or a pint after a day on the hill. If the history grabs you, Carmel O’Toole’s hefty local book Glenmalure: The Wild Heart of the Mountains (2015) is sold there.
Getting there and practical notes
- By car: this is the only realistic way in – the valley is genuinely remote with no useful public transport. The nearest railway is at Rathdrum, about 9 km away.
- Parking: free daytime parking at the Glenmalure Lodge car park and at Baravore at the head of the valley, with a few spaces near the Drumgoff crossroads.
- On the trails: the Wicklow Way passes through Glenmalure and links it over the Lugduff–Mullacor ridge to Glendalough, the obvious neighbouring stop. Glenmalure Golf Club is also in the valley.
- Dogs and sheep: this is working sheep country, so keep dogs under close control or on a lead, especially on the open hill.
Whatever you do here, treat the weather and the map seriously: the valley is at its best on a settled day, and there’s no signal to bail you out if it turns.