Wicklow Hills

Wednesday was forecast to be a windy day and the wind was forecast from the south west. This would have been a pain to deal with so I decided to go walking instead. The tourist information place told me that there was one bus a day into the Wicklow hills and that if I was quick, I could catch it. I did a quick rush pack, got on the train to a place called Bray and then caught the bus with minutes to spare. The bus goes to a place called Glendalough. This is one valley over from the highest mountain in the range. Glendalough is famous for a collection of really ancient churches and monasteries. It is in a beautiful setting at the base of a valley sweeping up into the mountains. There were a lot of tourists there!

I started the walk up the Glen, but was drawn to the ancient churches. It was a really interesting spot with several ruined churches, ancient graves and a really interesting rapunzel tower that had no door at the bottom, but had windows at the top. What was it used for?

I walked high up the south easy side of Glendalough and then back via some mines and the lakes along the valley floor. Even though I didn't get up a summit, it was a really nice lout windows walk. It would be interesting to know what they were mining. I suspect it was gold as I think that there is gold in that area.

I planned to walk along the Wicklow Way back to Bray. This looked like a hilly 20 miles back. I think this estimate was right. What I hadn't really counted on was that I had already walked about 10 miles and was quite tired. I also didn't have much water. It was however well worth the walk. There are some really nice changing views. One of the best bits was view to a mountain called something like Lugulla. It had a big granite cliff on it. There must be some good granite climbing in Wicklow. I ran the downhills and walked the uphills in order to make the best time possible. I needed to do this. Towards the end I got up to the summit of the oddly named Djouce Mountain. There were good views over the northern hills and down to the sunlit Great Sugar Loaf mountain (which despite being just 500m is a great mountain shape and would be a fine objective). I then ran down to the Powerscourt waterfall - which is really quite impressive and unexpected. Once back in the valley, I found that there were no public footpaths and I would have to go back along the roads. This is a real problem with Ireland: there is good scenery, but you can only really enjoy it from the road, apart from the odd exception such as the Wicklow Way.

I reached a town about 4 miles from Bray where there was a good bus service into town. The was a garage next to the bus stop and I gorged myself on ice cream and sparkling water. I was quite dehydrated. From Bray, I caught the train into Dun Laoghaire, bought some diesel for tomorrow, cooked and then went to bed. Tomorrow the plan is to get down the coast to a place called Cahore Point, ready for the crossing of the Irish Sea.