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(Christmas Morning) Glendalough Half Day Tour from Dublin
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From €73 per person
This is the Christmas morning Glendalough and Wicklow Mountains half-day tour, back by popular demand for December 25th. If you’d rather spend part of Christmas morning in one of Ireland’s most beautiful mountain valleys than indoors, this is worth knowing about.
You’ll join other guests for a stroll along the lakeshore and through the wooded paths of Glendalough - it’s a wonderfully quiet and peaceful setting at that time of year. Take it at your own pace, or find a quiet spot and enjoy a bit of solitude. The tour has you back in Dublin by lunchtime, so you’ve still got the rest of the day for whatever else you have planned.
Tickets are limited for this date, so it’s worth booking ahead. Free cancellation is available up to 24 hours before departure.
Glendalough on Christmas morning is a different experience from any other day of the year. The car parks that fill up by half ten in summer are empty, the paths between the lakes are quiet, and the round tower and monastic ruins have a stillness that suits the occasion. If you’ve never been, the setting is a glacial valley with two lakes lying end to end and a 10th-century round tower standing above the ruins of a medieval monastic city. It stops people in their tracks on an ordinary Tuesday; Christmas morning makes it something else again.
The tour walks the lakeshore path between the two lakes - the Green Road, which runs from the visitor centre along the Lower Lake and out to the boardwalk at the foot of the Upper Lake. It’s flat, manageable in winter boots, and takes you past nine of the major monastic ruins including the cathedral and the round tower. If conditions allow, the short detour to Poulanass Waterfall is worth it: follow the path from the Upper Lake car park through the oak wood to a thirty-metre cascade. Takes about forty minutes return.
The actual village nearest to Glendalough is Laragh, 1.5 km east, where three mountain roads meet. The tour is back in Dublin by lunchtime, so there’s unlikely to be a pub stop - but if you ever come on your own terms, Lynham’s of Laragh is the local with the turf fire and the right atmosphere for the day.
Dress in proper layers. December in a mountain valley is cold, and the lakeshore paths can be frosty in the morning. Waterproof boots are worth it; the paths are uneven near the Upper Lake.