A Sunday jaunt to Wicklow County - Take 2
Trip Start
Nov 26, 2007
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134
141
Trip End
Nov 04, 2009
Glendalough, County Wicklow, Ireland
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Our day started with Eddie (complete with racing strips) pulled into Belfield Park with Roisin to pick us up. By the way, Eddie is Roisin's little red mini complete with black racing stripes! We were off and heading south....
We pulled into Powerscourt Estate and had a drive around the grounds so that Max could check it out - we had done that the last time as well, but thankfully this time it was not pissing it down with rain. Then we made our was around the back for Powerscourt Waterfall. The 130m waterfall is pretty spectacular and as you can imagine Max and I had quite a good time snappity snap snap with our cameras.
Glendalough was next on the trip list and we headed toward the Upper and Lower Lakes and also the Monastic city. The weather was still holding out for us, which was lovely. It was unfortunate that there were plenty of tour buses that had make there way there so we waded our way through the flocks of tourists (obviously that does not include us...). We did manage to zig and zag our way through the hoards and made our way to the upper lake, which was very peaceful and calm and surrounded by the Wicklow mountains and plenty of greenery. We did struggle to find St Kevin's old pad, but we found an old church which was pretty cool.
The Monastic City was perhaps not quite as impressive as I had built it up in my head, but it was still amazing to see. Some of the headstone were huge, quite unbelievable to think that was common back in those times. I have a memory of a monastic city from my 7 day tour of Ireland back in 2000 and I had a feeling that it may have been in Glendalough, but after being there I don't think that it was. So it will plague me until I get home and have a chance to check my photos from back then!!
We were all really hungry by this point, as I think it was 2 or 3pm. So we went to the Meeting of the Waters in Avoca for a pub meal of good ol' fish and chips and a pint at the Meeting pub. Very cosy and good food. The meeting of the waters marks where 2 rivers meet - that is it and there is hardly even any white water where they do happen to meet, but obviously it has significance for some.
I struggled to stay awake in the car after having such a satisfying lunch. But after a pit-stop at Silverstrand Beach and an icecream I was back on track for our drive back to Dublin.
Such a lovely and relaxing day. Was such a lovely way to see Wicklow and we can't thank Roisin enough for taking us on a little day trip down south.
