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From Dublin: Wicklow, Glendalough, Waterfall & Sheepdog Show
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From €50 per person
This day trip from Dublin covers three quite different experiences in County Wicklow - a waterfall, an ancient monastery, and a working farm - all in a well-paced seven hours with an expert driver-guide keeping it together.
You start at Powerscourt Waterfall, Ireland’s highest at 120 metres, with 45 minutes to take it in. Then comes Glendalough, where you get a full two hours to explore St Kevin’s 6th-century monastic settlement beside the lakes. The ruined churches, round tower, and lakeside paths give you plenty to cover, and the setting in a glacial valley is genuinely beautiful. The sheepdog demonstration wraps up the day - watching a working dog move livestock with precision and quiet intelligence is one of those things that sticks with you.
From €50 per person. The tour runs approximately 7 hours, departing Dublin at 09:30. Powerscourt Waterfall entry is included. Lunch isn’t provided, but there’s food available at Glendalough. Some buses on this route have WiFi and USB charging.
Two hours at Glendalough sounds like plenty, and it is if you use them well. The most common mistake is staying near the round tower and the main visitor centre cluster. Head straight down the Green Road from the visitor centre instead - it runs along the Lower Lake, past the main ruins, through the woods, and out to the boardwalk at the Upper Lake. That 3 km return walk covers the best of the valley and takes about an hour, leaving you time to look properly at the round tower and the cathedral on your way back.
Lunch is available at Glendalough, but if you’re after something better than a visitor centre café, Laragh is 1.5 km east of the monastic site - Trinity Mountain Bothy is a walker’s café doing soup and sandwiches, and Lynham’s is a proper pub with food that’s been here since the 1770s. Worth mentioning to your guide if timing allows.
Powerscourt Waterfall is part of the Powerscourt Estate, which is centred on the village of Enniskerry, about 5 km north by road. The waterfall itself - 121 metres of the Dargle River over granite - has its own car park and entry separate from the main estate gardens. If your group has any interest in formal gardens, the terraced gardens at the main estate are a separate experience worth knowing about; National Geographic ranked them third in the world, behind Versailles and Kew.
The round tower itself is worth a close look: the doorway is three and a half metres up the wall. That wasn’t an architectural flourish - when the Vikings came up the valley looking for monastery silver, the monks pulled the ladder in after them. It worked some of the time.
Powerscourt Waterfall is at its most dramatic after rain, when the flow is at full force. If you’re visiting in the drier summer months the waterfall is smaller, but the walk around the base through the trees is good whatever the season.