Things to Do in County Wicklow

More about County Wicklow

Where to base yourself

Wicklow is close enough to Dublin that plenty of people never stay in it, and for a single day out that’s reasonable. Stay in the county and you get the mountains before the coaches arrive, which is the whole argument.

Laragh, the crossroads village a kilometre from Glendalough, is the most useful base in the interior: guesthouses, two pubs that do food late, and you can be at the Upper Lake before the car park fills. Enniskerry is prettier and better for eating, but it is an expensive village and books out early. Rathdrum and Rathnew sit lower down and cost less; Hunter’s Hotel at Rathnew is a genuinely old coaching inn with gardens running down to the Vartry, and has been in the same family since 1825. On the coast, Bray has the most beds and the DART line into Dublin, which makes it the sensible choice without a car. In the west of the county, Blessington is the base for Russborough and the reservoir lakes.

Weekends from May to September are the pinch, and the pinch is severe: Glendalough, Powerscourt and Brittas Bay all fill by ten or eleven on a fine Saturday. Bank holiday weekends need booking weeks ahead. Midweek in the same months is a different county.

The mountain roads

The Great Military Road is the R115, cut through the mountains between 1800 and 1809 to get soldiers into rebel country after 1798, and it is still the best drive in Leinster. It runs from Rathfarnham over blanket bog to Laragh, crossing the Sally Gap at around 500 m. There is no fuel, no shop and barely any phone signal along it, the surface is poor in places and it closes in snow — genuinely, several times most winters. The Wicklow Gap, the R756 between Hollywood and Glendalough, is wider and more reliable, and gives you the same country with less nerve required.

Lough Tay — the dark lake with the strip of white sand at its head — is on the privately owned Luggala estate, and there is no public access to the shore. The view everyone photographs is from the J.B. Malone memorial car park on the R759, which holds perhaps twenty cars and overflows onto a road with nowhere safe to park. Come early, or come on a weekday. A few kilometres south, Glenmacnass Waterfall drops off the plateau beside the road, with a lay-by right at the top; the rocks above it are polished and lethally slippery, and people have died there.

Walking

The Wicklow Way runs 131 km from Marlay Park on the edge of Dublin to Clonegal in Carlow, usually walked in six or seven days, and much of it can be sampled in day sections with a bus back. The best single day in the county is the Spinc loop above Glendalough — up the wooden steps beside Poulanass waterfall onto the Lugduff boardwalk, along the ridge with the Upper Lake directly below, and down through the old mining valley at the head of the glen. Reckon on three to four hours and expect company.

Djouce is the easiest big hill: 725 m, mostly on boardwalk from the Pier Gates car park, and about two and a half hours return. The Great Sugarloaf looks harder than it is — 501 m of quartzite scree, forty-five minutes up from the car park off the N11, with a scramble at the top and a view over Dublin Bay. For mountain biking, Ballinastoe is a purpose-built trail centre in the forest above Roundwood with graded loops.

Houses, gardens and mills

Russborough outside Blessington is a 1740s Palladian house with a 200 m granite frontage, the Beit art collection, and the distinction of having been robbed four times, most famously by Rose Dugdale in 1974 and Martin Cahill in 1986. The house is seen by guided tour and runs on a season; the parkland, maze and café have longer hours. Kilruddery near Bray keeps one of the very few 17th-century formal garden layouts left in these islands — twin canals, a hedged sylvan theatre, a Victorian orangery — with a farm market on Saturdays.

Mount Usher at Ashford is the opposite kind of garden: twenty acres of informal Robinsonian planting along the Vartry, crossed by suspension bridges, and at its best in azalea season and again in autumn. At Avoca the mill has been working since 1723, which makes it the oldest in Ireland; you can watch the looms and the shop is free to walk into.

The coast

Brittas Bay is five kilometres of dune-backed sand with two pay-and-display car parks and lifeguards through the summer — the Dublin overflow beach, and packed on any hot weekend. Silver Strand south of Wicklow town is smaller and reached by steep steps down the cliff; the access has been closed at times after rockfalls, so check locally before driving out. The Bray to Greystones cliff walk is about 7 km, roughly two hours, and the trick is to walk it one way and take the DART back. It too has been closed or rerouted after landslips, so look it up the morning you go rather than relying on an old blog.

The Dublin–Wicklow line hugs the sea for much of its length and is worth taking as a trip in itself.