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Private Wicklow Tour Glendalough & Powerscourt From Dublin
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From €950 per person
This is a private 7-hour day trip into County Wicklow, run by a team who are genuinely passionate about their country and put a lot of thought into making the day enjoyable. You’ll travel in a luxury air-conditioned vehicle, be met at your Dublin location, and have your guide’s full attention throughout.
The day covers Glendalough’s ancient monastic valley, a sheepdog demonstration giving you a real feel for Irish country life, a stop for lunch and whiskey at a local pub, and a scenic drive back to Dublin. USB chargers are in every seat and parking fees are covered.
At Glendalough, two hours is enough to understand the place - but only if you use the time well. Walk the Green Road from the visitor centre to the Upper Lake rather than starting at the car park end. You’ll pass the cathedral, the round tower (30 metres, doorway 3.5 metres off the ground - it was a strongbox as much as a bell tower), the Deer Stone at St Kevin’s Church, and the full sweep of the valley before you reach the water. The Lower Lake takes the day-trip crowds; the Upper Lake is quieter.
The round tower is the centrepiece, but the seven churches tell the fuller story. St Kevin’s Church - the one with the chimney-shaped belfry, sometimes called St Kevin’s Kitchen - is the most distinctive building on the site. At the valley’s peak, Glendalough was a town: a scriptorium, schools, workshops, and several thousand people living in the settlement. The grass came back slowly after the English left in 1552.
For the pub lunch, the village of Laragh is 1.5 km east of the valley. Lynham’s of Laragh has been a pub on that site since the 1770s - turf fire, honest pint, food served until later than most Wicklow kitchens manage. The Wicklow Heather does a more formal room with a serious Irish whiskey list and a Writers’ Room walled with first editions of Joyce, Yeats and Beckett. If your guide is taking you somewhere off the valley, both are solid options after a morning at the ruins.
Glendalough is best in the early morning or late afternoon. The site is 40 minutes from Dublin city centre and coaches fill the car park by half ten most days. This tour’s 90-minute drive out means you’ll likely arrive as the coaches are leaving or before they arrive in number. If you have a choice of departure time, an early Dublin pick-up puts you in the valley before the bulk of the day-trip traffic.
Powerscourt means Enniskerry. The estate is on the edge of the village, and the gardens at Powerscourt - 47 acres of formal terraces and a Triton Lake with the Great Sugar Loaf behind them - were ranked third in the world by National Geographic, behind Versailles and Kew. The Palladian house was gutted by fire in November 1974, the week after a long restoration was finally completed; the stabilised shell has been open since 1996. If your guide routes through Enniskerry on the Powerscourt leg, the village square has Poppies café open from 8.30am and two pubs - the Enniskerry Inn has been on the square under various names for a long time. The waterfall is a separate 6km drive from the estate and worth the extra trip: 121 metres of the Dargle River over granite, the highest continuous-flow waterfall in the Republic.