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Dublin: Full-Day Wicklow Mountains Tour w/ Glendalough Visit
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From €59 per person
An hour south of Dublin, the Wicklow Mountains feel like a different world entirely - and this full-day tour takes you to the best of them. Your guide covers the monastic site of St. Kevin at Glendalough and walks you through the National Park to the famous lakes. It’s a genuinely beautiful spot, and the history of the place (monks choosing this valley for good reason) makes it even better.
From Glendalough you head to Powerscourt, one of Ireland’s most celebrated gardens. The Japanese garden, the winged horse statues, the curious pet graveyard, the Rapunzel tower - there’s a lot to take in across the manicured terraces and woodland walks. The estate has won awards for good reason.
The day finishes with traditional Irish stew at Johnnie Fox’s pub, tucked away in the hills and arguably the most local, unhurried spot you’ll find anywhere near Dublin. A solid end to a full day outdoors.
The tour is available with an Italian or Spanish guide if you select that option at booking.
At Glendalough: the valley at Glendalough holds a 6th-century monastic city founded by St Kevin - a round tower, cathedral, seven churches, and a graveyard still in use, all sitting between two mountain lakes. The guided visit on this tour typically covers the core site around the round tower (30 metres of 10th-century granite, with the entrance doorway three and a half metres up the wall as a defence against Viking raids). If time allows before or after the group visit, the Green Road walk along the Lower Lake to the Upper Lake is flat, well-marked, and earns the landscape properly. The Upper Lake is quieter than the Lower and gives you the valley views that make it clear why Kevin chose this spot. The walker’s shortcut: arrive earlier in the morning if possible, as the coach tours peak at mid-morning and the round tower area gets crowded.
Lunch planning: Glendalough has a hotel café near the visitor centre, but it serves the bus crowd at noon and the queues reflect that. Laragh is 1.5km east of the monastic site, where Lynham’s pub and Trinity Mountain Bothy café are both more relaxed options for a mid-morning stop if your tour’s schedule allows a detour - Lynham’s has been a pub here since the 1770s, at the junction of the Military Road and the mountain routes. On this tour, the main food stop is Johnnie Fox’s pub at the end of the day, so pace yourself.
At Powerscourt: the estate is 19 km north of Glendalough, back toward Dublin in the north Wicklow hills, in the estate village of Enniskerry. The terraced gardens descend toward the Great Sugar Loaf mountain - on a clear day the view is one of the best formal-garden panoramas in Ireland, and National Geographic ranked them third in the world behind Versailles and Kew. The pet cemetery is genuinely worth finding (Victorian animals with engraved headstones), and the Japanese garden section is small but carefully done. The Palladian house above the gardens was gutted by fire in 1974 - the week after its restoration was finally complete - and has been an open shell since 1996. The Powerscourt Waterfall, at 121 metres the highest continuous-flow waterfall in the Republic, is a separate site on the estate about 6km from the main gardens; the main tour typically covers the gardens only.
At Johnnie Fox’s: the pub sits in the hills above Glencullen at 330 metres above sea level, making it one of the highest pubs in Ireland. The Irish stew is the traditional finish - thick, lamb-based, the kind of thing that makes sense after a full day in mountain air. The pub has been here since 1798 and does not pretend otherwise. It’s quiet enough most evenings to have a proper conversation, which after a day in Glendalough is the right way to end things.
Weather note: Wicklow weather is unpredictable. The mountains generate their own cloud and a clear Dublin morning can mean wet conditions in the valley by midday. The tour includes bus transport so you won’t be caught out on an exposed hillside, but a waterproof layer in your bag is sensible.