Wicklow Mountains National Park

Wicklow Mountains National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

The Wicklow Mountains begin on the southern edge of Dublin, within sight of the city, and their national park, the largest in Ireland, is the capital's back garden, reached in an hour by road. It has one centre that everybody visits, the valley of Glendalough, about fifty kilometres from Dublin, with a ruined monastic city, two lakes and the park's information office, and a private bus service runs there daily from the city centre and back, which with the many coach tours makes it one of the few Irish national parks accessible without a car. At Glendalough there are two car parks, both charging a fee: the lower one, beside the state visitor centre for the monastic site, which has an exhibition and a small admission charge, and the upper one, a kilometre and a half further up the valley beside the Upper lake, where the park's own information hut stands; the monuments themselves and the park are free.

Nine walking routes, marked by colours, start from here, from a level stroll of half an hour along the boardwalk between the lakes to half-day hill walks. The best of them is the white route, the Spinc and Glenealo valley circuit, nine kilometres and three to three and a half hours, which climbs beside the Poulanass waterfall and up some six hundred steps of old railway sleepers to a boardwalk along the top of the cliffs above the Upper lake, and returns down the valley past the ruined miners' village. Beyond Glendalough, the park is crossed by two high roads of great beauty, over the Sally Gap and the Wicklow Gap, from which one sees Lough Tay, the Glenmacnass waterfall and miles of empty bog. Guided hikes with local guides, who add history and stories, leave from the villages, and the Wicklow Way passes through. The ascent of Lugnaquilla is for experienced hill walkers.

Visiting Wicklow Mountains National Park: what you will see

The park was established in 1991 and has grown to more than two hundred square kilometres, nearly all of it open upland above the farmed valleys. The Wicklow Mountains are the largest continuous area of high ground in Ireland, a broad dome of granite that welled up some four hundred million years ago, the biggest mass of granite in these islands, flanked by older schists in which lie veins of lead, zinc and a little gold; the ice age glaciers carved into it a series of deep, straight, steep-sided valleys, Glendalough, Glenmalure, Glenmacnass and Glendasan, with corrie lakes high on the flanks, and left the summits as rounded, boggy whalebacks, the highest of which, Lugnaquilla, reaches 925 metres. Blanket bog and heath cover the uplands, purple with heather in August, with remnants of native oak wood on the valley sides, best seen round the lakes of Glendalough, and conifer plantations. The deer that are seen everywhere are hybrids of the native red deer and the Japanese sika, which was introduced to the Powerscourt estate in 1860 and escaped; feral goats scramble about the cliffs of Glendalough, and the birds of the park include the peregrine, the merlin, the red grouse, the ring ouzel, the raven, the dipper and the goosander, with red squirrels and pine martens in the woods.

Glendalough, the glen of the two lakes, was chosen in the sixth century by St Kevin, a hermit of royal blood, who lived, according to his legend, in a cave above the Upper lake, a Bronze Age tomb still to be seen in the cliff, standing for hours in the cold water in prayer, and so still that a blackbird nested in his hand. The settlement that grew up round his memory became one of the great monasteries and centres of learning of early Christian Ireland, a town of perhaps a thousand people, which survived repeated Viking raids and was finally ruined by English forces in 1398. Its remains, mostly of the tenth to twelfth centuries, include a perfect round tower thirty metres high, which served as belfry, treasury and refuge, a gateway with two arches, unique in Ireland, a roofless cathedral, high crosses, and the small stone-roofed oratory called St Kevin's kitchen, with a miniature round tower for a belfry. The Military Road, which runs the length of the mountains by the Sally Gap, was built by the army between 1800 and 1809 to reach the rebels who held out here after the rising of 1798 under Michael Dwyer. Lead was mined at the head of Glendalough and in Glendasan from the 1790s until 1957. Lough Tay, dark as stout with a beach of imported white sand at its head like a creamy top, lies in the Luggala estate, long the property of the Guinness family, and the mountains have stood in for Scotland and Scandinavia in a long list of films and television series.

Wicklow Mountains National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open at all times. May and June are the best months, with long days, the oak woods in new leaf and the driest weather; July and August are the warmest, 17 to 20 degrees, and the heather flowers in August; September and October bring autumn colour at Glendalough and the rut of the deer. Winter is wet, windy and short of daylight, with occasional snow that closes the Sally Gap and Wicklow Gap roads.

Glendalough is overwhelmed on fine weekends and bank holidays, when the car parks fill before eleven and the access road is closed to further traffic, so come early, or on a weekday, or by bus. The weather on the tops changes fast and mist is frequent, so that even on the marked routes one needs waterproofs, warm clothing and boots, and on the open mountain a map and compass. Do not leave valuables in cars. Allow a day. Powerscourt gardens and waterfall are forty minutes from Glendalough, Avoca and its weavers half an hour, and Dublin an hour.