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From Dublin: Wild Wicklow Mountains and Glendalough Tour
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From €55 per person
The difference between this Wicklow tour and most others is the vehicle. A smaller coach means your driver can take narrow back roads into valleys and viewpoints that 50-seater tour buses simply can’t reach. The result is a more personal experience of mountains that are only an hour from Dublin but feel genuinely remote.
The guides here are local, and it shows. Rather than working through a script, they talk about the landscape, the people, and the history with the ease of someone who’s grown up in it. The route takes you through the Sally Gap mountain pass, with a stop at Lough Tay - the dark mountain lake known as the Guinness Lake, where the water’s colour against the white sand beach looks remarkably like a pint of stout. It’s a proper photo stop.
Glendalough is the main event. You get a solid two hours here, which is enough to see the monastic ruins, walk the lower lake path, and get to the upper lake if you keep moving. The 6th-century settlement founded by Saint Kevin still has its round tower standing, alongside stone churches, high crosses, and a graveyard that’s been in continuous use for over a thousand years. Along the way, there’s a 30-minute break at Avoca Handweavers, Ireland’s oldest working mill. The day ends with a tasting of Glendalough Whiskey - a local distillery that draws its water from these same mountains, which feels like the right way to close it out.
Rated 4.8 out of 5 by over 1,400 guests. From €55 per person.
Two hours at Glendalough gives you real options. The Green Road from the visitor centre to the Upper Lake is 3 km return and takes about an hour at a steady pace - it runs along the shore of the Lower Lake, past the main ruins (round tower, cathedral, stone churches), through the oak woods, and out to the boardwalk at the Upper Lake. The Upper Lake is quieter and the valley opens up there in a way you won’t get near the coach park. If you keep moving from the start, you can do this walk and still have time back at the round tower.
The round tower itself has its doorway three and a half metres up the wall. That was a defensive measure - when the Vikings came up the valley, the monks pulled the ladder in. The tower still stands because it worked, at least some of the time.
The 30-minute stop at Avoca is enough for the mill but not the valley. Avoca Handweavers has been weaving on this site since 1723 - originally set up to clothe the copper miners working the hills above the village. The looms are still running and you can watch them from the floor. The mill café does decent coffee and the Avoca brown bread is the real thing. If you want a sit-down moment, this is the stop for it.
Avoca itself is 20 minutes south of Glendalough by road, and the village carries more history than the mill stop suggests - the copper mines on the hill above operated from the Bronze Age until 1982, and the village was the location for six series of Ballykissangel (Fitzgerald’s pub is still Fitzgerald’s). Worth a proper visit if you’re in the area another day.