Fastpacking Ireland's Wicklow Way
The Wiclow Way is Ireland's oldest long-distance trail and considered by many to be its most scenic. Stretching 130 km through the Wicklow mountains, it winds through forests, open moorland, glacial valleys and through its largest National Park. So green! Our journey would take us through some of the most remote and scenic parts of the trail over 3 days, passing old villages, farms and ancient ruins, offering a unique glimpse into Ireland's rural past. So we are in Bray which is a beautiful little coastal town about a half an hour south of Dublin, we arrived here yesterday by train and today we're going to continue on south to Tinahely which is at the southern end of the Wicklow Way so that we can start the trail tomorrow morning. This is nice! Jeff and Audrée. There's a certificate saying "I walked the Wicklow Way".
The Wicklow Way officially starts from the suburbs of Dublin in Marley Park running South through County Wicklow to the Village of Clonegal in County Carlow, 130 km or roughly 80 miles. We'd be doing a modified version of the route over 3 days starting from Tinahely and heading north taking a few detours before peeling off to follow the route for a race that we'd be running at the end of the month which finishes back in Bray. Okay so a mid-morning start for day one, our wonderful accommodations had left us some vouchers for breakfast at what I think is the only breakfast place in town, but it didn't open till 9:00 a.m. but we figured that would be best
to start with a good base, a good nutritional foundation for the day, but we're going to have to walk it off a little bit here for the first little bit, yeah as we digest. It's quite chilly this morning we figured maybe about 7 or 8° so I'm keeping the puffy on until I warm up here in a few minutes, but we're super lucky the forecast actually looks fantastic for the next couple of days, today mostly sunny with some clouds and the rest of the weekend cloudy but no rain at all in the forecast which I'm sure doesn't happen very often here. The Wicklow Way was officially opened in 1980 making it one of the earliest long-distance walking trails in Ireland and it's since become one of its most popular. Parts of the route run through private land where land owners and conservation groups work together to keep the trail accessible for hikers while also protecting the land's natural beauty. The Wicklow mountains are normally known for their wet and unpredictable conditions but the forecast for the week was looking pretty good. I suspect it gets quite muddy when it does rain here on these trails and some of the bogs that we'll be seeing up higher as well so we're quite lucky this week.
So green! From Tinahely we had run through farmland along rolling terrain, we'd now begin to climb up through a series of forestry plantations before eventually reaching the Glenmalure Valley and the Glenmalure Lodge which would be our home for the night after running 33 km with just over 1200m of elevation gain. So we're about 15 km in, that's about half of our mileage for the day, last 10 km or so have been on mostly rolling terrain taking us through farmland, a mix of gravel and pavement and now we're back into this forested area here, we are able to pull some water from a creek now we're just having a little snack as we climb up this hill here and we just saw some deer cross ahead of us about a minute or two ago. Saw more? Yeah just up here, they cross the road but they're so quick! Okay we just connected through some pavement back there to another park area and it looks like we're about to start our big climb for the day, we got about 500m left and then we're going to drop down to our lodge where we're staying for the night. Oh there's some deer right there, oh I scared them away. A number of species can be found along the Wicklow Way from red grouse and mountain hare to the native Irish Red Deer. Oh there's a hut, little shelter, tent platform. Up we go.
You regretting not having your poles? Yes yeah I missed them. It's the problem doing all your training with poles, you forget how to climb without them, but we've got our poles in our luggage so we might take them for tomorrow, tomorrow's a big day. Timber harvesting is a familiar sight in Ireland and the rest of the day's route would take us through a series of large plantations. Quite a bit of forest harvesting as you can see but it does look as well like they're doing quite a bit of reforestation and some of that actually might even be reforesting areas that were previously cleared for grazing. Forestry has long been a major industry in Ireland but for much of the past Century it was driven by large scale planting of fast growing non-native trees in single species plantations, an approach that often came at the expense of biodiversity and soil health. In recent years new policies have aimed to make forestry more sustainable. In County Wicklow, in particular, efforts are being made to move away from monoculture, incorporating mixed woodlands that support a greater variety of plant and animal life.
Looks like our home for the night down there. We soon arrived at our lodge which was built in 1801 as a hunting retreat and which sits in a glacial valley 20 km long, the longest in Ireland. Today the area is a popular access point for climbers and the lodge itself is a well-known rest stop for walkers on the Wicklow Way.
So we have arrived at Glenmalure Lodge in the Glenmalure Valley and our luggage was waiting for us here, we have luggage transfer services which is amazing. It's 4:00 now, it was about 5 hours on feet, we're going to have a snack now maybe a beer and then have dinner in a couple of hours as well. We'd now climb out the other side of the valley, taking a detour from the Wiclow Way around the opposite side of Glendalough, leading to a 6th century monastic site. From there we'll follow rolling terrain before beginning a long ascent past Lough Tay, also known as Guinness Lake. We'll then descend to our B&B just outside of the village of Enniskerry, a total of just over 47 km with 1850m of elevation gain.
Okay it's day two, we got started at about 9:00, breakfast was at 8 and today is a much longer day, it's our longest day of the three, but before we go too far we're looking for a little hidden waterfall that should be just off the side of the trail here somewhere and I think this is it here. The water's so clean too. That would have been a great swim spot if it wasn't 9 in the morning. Putting our shells on as an insulating layer, wind's really picking up, felt a couple of raindrops as well. So we're on a bit of a side trail here called the Miner's trail, there's a bit of a trail closure down near the lake so we're now going up and around the lake this way, so a bit of a diversion, there's quite a few diversions and side trails along the Wicklow Way that you can take and this one's been really nice.
So we're just at the site of some monastic ruins, this was originally built in the 6th Century. The remains here are from the 12th century I believe, near the Nature Preserve that we just ran through. We stopped to have a coffee there, we could have actually had lunch as well but we packed lunch today, but we better hit the road, we still got quite a bit of ground to cover today. Spooky! So these mountains they were battlegrounds where the rebels would hide during the Rebellion against the British and so a lot of these roads we've been crossing are actually old military roads that they would have built to connect the army barracks and to allow for the transport of troops, the movement of troops up into these mountains. During the 1798 Rebellion. Irish Rebels used
this rugged landscape to evade British forces, vanishing into the deep valleys and dense forests. In response the British built a network of military roads through the mountains making it easier to move troops and to cut off escape routes. Today these roads remain, now paved for vehicles and used by hikers and cyclists rather than soldiers. We took a little deviation there off the Wicklow Way so that we could top out on top of that hill, be joining back up with it down here. So here we go it looks like our final sort of big climb of the day, about 350m to go and then it'll be mostly downhill, kind of rolling, the weather's held up well and we're still expecting some nice views coming up here of what's nicknamed Guinness Lake very shortly.
One of the most iconic sites in the Wicklow Mountains is Lough Tay, better known as Guinness Lake, which sits on private land owned by the Guinness family and it's a popular filming location for movies and TV shows like Vikings. It's dark waters and the bright shoreline at one end are said to make it look like a pint of stout. That was intense! Yeah! It got super windy up there. I'm sweating buckets now in this shell but I needed it for the wind. Okay we're on the home stretch here, about 7 km to go and it's all downhill.
Long day. I'll say! We climbed 1900m. Oh wow it's more than we thought.
That's a lot more than we thought. I see our bags right there. Well that was a very long day but an incredibly scenic one as well, we were ducking in and out of the National Park all day and I should mention that I have a special permit that allows me to fly my drone in the National Park here in Wicklow Mountains National Park, we're working with Tourism Ireland this month but normally you would not be able to fly in the national parks here in Ireland or in the nature preserves. So we checked into our B&B here,
we just had a shower and we're just waiting for our cab to arrive that's going to take us to the nearest town so that we can grab some dinner at a pub. Our final day would be the shortest starting with the climb over Great Sugarloaf after which we'd cross the highway to summit Little Sugarloaf. We'd then climb up and along Bray Head to Bray Head Cross before dropping down to our finish at our hotel in Bray, a total of just 23 km with 900m of elevation gain. Okay day three, our final day on the Wicklow Way and today's the shortest day, just a half marathon today, but we're feeling pretty stiff so we're just taking it easy as we walk back up the hill here to our trail head at the park where we peeled off to get to our B&B last night. How are you feeling today? Unfortunately I think I have, I'm fighting a little bit of a cold, so feeling a little rough and yeah like you said quite stiff so we need to warm up a little bit and then we'll be fine.
Yeah I'm just getting over my cold which obviously I gave to Audrée. So I'm just starting mine. So our first little climb of the day is up to Sugarloaf Mountain, the volcanic looking type peak that we saw at the end of our run yesterday.
Just south of Great Sugarloaf lies an area called The Commons. This open land made up of bogs and grasslands was traditionally used for grazing and remains a public space with horses and other animals often seen grazing here today. Hi! So our route today is almost entirely on a course that we'll be racing at the end of the month, that's another reason why we're taking this diversion, the Eco Trail Wicklow 80k, so it's a good chance for us to recce the route today And little Sugarloaf. Yeah I think it's called. That's next. Hey there how's it going? Hello, love your videos man! So I'm from Dublin, so these are kind of like local enough trails, you kind of need to drive out a bit for them but they're probably the best we have, and I'm doing the 46k so I'm not doing the full one, making my way up to that but yeah I mean I run these trails all the time, it's a really nice course and as long as the weather holds up should be fun yeah! Yeah tell me about how are we lucky with the weather here is this normal? Yeah you're really lucky I mean it's normally rain a lot of the time, we've had a shocking summer, it's so so windy, so yeah you got quite lucky and it's meant to get even better so yeah! Yeah nice, hey guys, how you doing? I hear you guys are doing the 80k, awesome we'll see you there! Yeah see you there.
Some local lads out for a training run there, we've actually seen a few groups of runners over the last couple of days who have stopped to say hi which is quite nice, people out for different training runs and driving by in their cars actually too, but really I mean everybody has been so friendly here in Ireland so far. This is our second last climb of the day and then we have just one more small one, about 250m up to the top of Little Sugarloaf over here, we got a really nice view looking back on Great Sugarloaf and then it'll be downhill to Bray on the other side. So now just along those bumps to Bray Head and then down to Bray. Last little climb of the day up and over Bray Head and then down into Bray, our final destination by the sea and I'm looking forward to coffee from a really good coffee shop I found before we started. It wouldn't be one of our adventures without an overpriced cappuccino.
That's true! During our 3 days on the Wicklow Way we had experienced rugged mountains, deep valleys and centuries of history, seeing firsthand how the landscape is shaped by both nature and the people who call it home. Hi, good dog, good dog. And as we reached the end of our journey it was clear that the Wicklow Way isn't just a trail, it's a window into Ireland's past and a reminder of its ever-changing future.
We had a great time on the trail and we got really lucky with the weather although we were carrying extra layers and full waterproof gear just in case. You can learn about all the gear that we carried in a separate video on my channel in my series the Mudroom, and my supporting channel members can watch a version of the film with director's commentary to learn more about the logistics and to hear some more behind the scenes anecdotes as well. Our adventure here in Ireland is just getting started. Today we're picking up a caravan that we'll have for 10 days to tour around the country as well as Northern Ireland before returning here to Bray at the end of the month to race the Eco Trail Wicklow 80k. Let's just hope that our luck with the weather here holds up!
2025-03-03 03:38
