← All Wicklow tours via Viator · From €1200 · 6-8 hours 
Wicklow Mountains and Powerscourt Private Luxury Car Tour
Free cancellation 3 traveller reviews Booked securely via Viator
Check availability & prices →
From €1200 per person
Wicklow has been one of the most popular day trips from Dublin for years, and it’s not hard to understand why. Known as the Garden of Ireland, the county offers a mix of dramatic mountain scenery, ancient woodland, glacial lakes and one of the country’s best-preserved monastic sites - all within easy reach of the city. This private luxury car tour covers the highlights in comfort, with a guided tour included.
Films like Excalibur and Braveheart were shot in the Wicklow landscape, and after a day here you’ll see exactly why directors keep coming back.
Powerscourt Waterfall - Ireland’s highest waterfall at 121 metres, set in one of the most beautiful forested areas of County Wicklow. Movies including Excalibur and Braveheart were filmed in this landscape. (30 min)
Powerscourt Estate and Gardens - National Geographic voted Powerscourt Estate and Gardens the number 3 gardens in the world. (90 min)
Lough Tay (Guinness Lake) - The striking glacial lake famous for its resemblance to a pint of Guinness, with dark water and a white sandy shore. (15 min)
Glendalough Monastic Settlement - One of Ireland’s most important early Christian sites, this ancient monastic settlement dates back 1,500 years. (120 min)
Upper Glendalough Lake - A beautiful lake at the end of a glacial valley, well worth lingering over for photos. (39 min)
At Powerscourt Waterfall, walk the twenty-minute loop around the base pool. The waterfall in Enniskerry drops 121 metres over a granite face - the highest continuous-flow waterfall in the Republic - and the mist it throws is real. The short loop from the car park circles the pool and lets you see the full drop from below. It’s a different experience from the estate gardens up the road, and worth the thirty minutes.
At Powerscourt Estate, take a few minutes in the Italian Garden below the house. The formal terraces at Enniskerry step down toward the Triton Lake with the Great Sugar Loaf mountain framing the view behind it. It’s the composition the estate is famous for, and it earns the accolade. If time allows, the walled garden east of the house is quieter and often skipped by the crowds.
The Lough Tay stop is short, so position yourself well. The lake sits below the road and the best views are from the layby overlooking the hollow. The “Guinness pint” resemblance - dark water, white sandy shore - is most obvious from the elevated viewpoint. It’s worth the fifteen minutes just to understand the scale of the glacial landscape you’ve been driving through. Roundwood, the highest village in Ireland at 238 metres, is a few minutes down the R755 if you want a coffee stop.
You have two full hours at Glendalough - use the whole valley. The Green Road runs flat from the visitor centre along the Lower Lake, past the main monastic ruins, and out to the Upper Lake in about twenty-five minutes on foot. With two hours, you can walk between the lakes, take in the round tower and the cathedral cluster, and still have time to follow the Poulanass Waterfall trail from the Upper Lake car park - a short climb through oak woodland to a thirty-metre cascade. That is the Glendalough most day-trippers miss.
The round tower tells you what Viking raids looked like. The doorway at Glendalough is three and a half metres off the ground - not symbolic, but defensive. When raiders came up the valley, the monks pulled the ladder up after them. The tower was built sometime in the 10th or 11th century; the conical roof on top was rebuilt in 1876 after a lightning strike from the original stones.
If lunch or coffee comes up near Glendalough, go to Laragh rather than the visitor centre café. The hamlet is a kilometre and a half east of the monastic site, at the junction of the Military Road, the R755, and the Glendalough road. Lynham’s of Laragh does proper pub food and Trinity Mountain Bothy handles soup and sandwiches. Both are quieter than the valley café and run by people who live here.