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Glendalough Powerscourt Co Wicklow Private Day Tour
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From €850 per person
This is a private 8-9 hour chauffeur tour through County Wicklow - Ireland’s Garden County - covering some of the best the region has to offer. Your chauffeur guide meets you at your hotel (just send through your pick-up details in advance) and the vehicle and driver are fully licensed and insured in accordance with the Irish Government Transport Authority.
You’ll visit Glendalough, home to St Kevin’s Monastery and the ruins of 5th-century abbeys - one of Ireland’s earliest and most atmospheric monastic settlements. From there it’s on to Powerscourt Waterfall and the picturesque Lough Tay, known locally as the Guinness Lake. Lunch is at the Wicklow Heather Gastro Pub.
Make the most of your hour at Glendalough. The monastic site is bigger than it looks on the map - the round tower, cathedral, and seven churches spread across a valley between two lakes. If the tour gives you free movement, walk the Green Road from the visitor centre along the Lower Lake toward the Upper Lake: it’s flat, buggy-friendly, and passes nine of the major monastic ruins in about 40 minutes. The doorway to the round tower sits three and a half metres off the ground, and the reason - Vikings, and the need to pull a ladder up behind you - is more interesting than the tower itself.
Lunch is at the Wicklow Heather Gastro Pub in Laragh, which is actually the village that serves Glendalough. The pub’s Writers’ Room bar is lined with signed first editions of Joyce, Yeats and Heaney - genuine ones, bought by the owners. It’s the kind of detail you notice after your first pint. The menu runs to Wicklow lamb and Irish beef; the kitchen is the real reason the locals eat here.
At Avoca, the mill is the main reason to stop - not the shop. Avoca Handweavers has been weaving on the same site since 1723, set up originally to clothe the copper miners working the hills above the village. You can watch the looms running. The Avoca Mill Café in the mill building is fine for a coffee; the village itself is small enough to walk end to end in ten minutes. The confluence of the Avonmore and Avonbeg rivers - where Thomas Moore sat and wrote “The Meeting of the Waters” in 1807 - is a short walk from the car park and takes five minutes to find.
The 60-minute allocation for Glendalough will feel tight if you want to walk as far as the Upper Lake. Let your chauffeur know in advance if the walk matters to you, so timing can be adjusted. The car park fills by mid-morning in summer; a private vehicle gives you the flexibility to arrive earlier than the coaches.