Glendalough

From Dublin the most direct route is to follow M11 / N11 past Bray, then at Kilmacanogue follow R755 through Roundwood and Annamoe. It's well signposted and all the traffic is heading the same way. Good luck finding a parking space if you come on a summer weekend.

There are lots of scenic alternatives, eg by the "Scalp" road and Powerscourt, or by the old military road. These will be congested on fine weekends.

If you don't have your own wheels, best bet is a bus excursion. These depart daily from Dublin, and one reliable operator is the national company Bus Éireann.

St Kevin's Bus has plied between Dublin and Glendalough for a mere century, but not for 1400 years, and there's no historical evidence that yer man ever rode the bus. It runs daily from St Stephen's Green in Dublin at 11:30, taking 90 min via Cabinteely, Bray (for DART trains), Kilmacanogue, Roundwood and Annamoe, and sets off back around 17:00. There are two runs daily in summer, and July-Aug a third between Bray station and Glendalough. Although it's designed for day trips (with four hours to explore Glendalough), you can take it as a point-to-point bus. Adult single €13, return €20.

Bus 183 runs M-F four or five times, Sa Su thrice, from Wicklow town via Ashford, Rathnew, Roundwood and Annamoe to Laragh and Glendalough, 45 min. At Wicklow the bus is held for trains from Dublin Connolly.

• 🌍 Glendalough Visitor Centre, ☏ +353 404 45352, +353 404 45325. Daily Apr-Oct 09:30-18:00, Nov-Mar 09:00-17:00. Start here for orientation and background on the ruins. There's an interesting exhibition and an audio-visual show. Guided tours of the Monastic City are available in multiple languages all year round by advance booking. The Centre also holds free summer lectures on Irish heritage and history. Parking €4 per car. (updated Aug 2020)
• Trinity Church is the shell of a simple 11th / 12th C church 200 m east of the Visitor Centre. It's outside the main complex, and most visitors run out of time seeing the main sites and don't bother coming here.
• The Gateway just west of the centre is a double doorway, originally a two-storey gatehouse. The cross inscribed on the west wall between the doorways marks the boundary of the sanctuary - if you made it across the line, you were home safe, in theory. Alas many attackers decided otherwise. The graveyard just beyond is still in use.
• 🌍 The Round Tower. This is one of the finest examples in Ireland of a round tower: it's about 1000 years old yet in excellent condition, just over 30 m high. It originally had six wooden floors connected by ladders. The four stories above the entrance are beautifully lit by a tiny window, while the top story has four windows. The conical roof was redone in 1876 using the same stone. Like other such towers it was a bell tower, and not defensive - the reason the entrance is 3.5 m above ground level was simply to avoid weakening the base. (updated Aug 2020)
• St Peter and St Pauls' Cathedral was built in several phases, with the nave dating to the 10th century and the chancel, sacristry and north door to the 12th / 13th. It replaced an earlier church: the west door is recycled stone from this. Note the piscina, the basin for washing holy vessels. In 1214 the diocese was absorbed by Dublin so St Peter and St Paul's ceased to be a cathedral, and Glendalough lost much of its importance. It could still be a cosy sinecure, eg for Viscount Loftus, the Elizabethan noble whose family practised nepotism on a grand scale.
• St Kevin's Cross is a few metres south of the cathedral. This huge 12th C High Cross is carved from a single piece of granite. Unusually, the centre is not pierced.
• The Priests' House southwest side of the cathedral was reconstructed from original stone, using a 1779 drawing of the previous Romanesque building. Its earlier function is unknown, perhaps it housed relics of St Kevin. The present name is because priests were interred here in the 18th and 19th centuries, in the "penal laws" era when there were no RC churches to bury them.

• 🌍 St Kevin's Church 100 m south is a bijou affair, from 11th C but heavily reconstructed. It's often called "St Kevin's Kitchen" because the little round tower belfry looks like a cookhouse chimney. Actually it looks even more like an old steam laundry, odd that the latter nickname never caught on.
• St Ciarán's next to St Kevin's is just a few scraps of masonry. It's probably named for the fellow who founded Clonmacnoise.
• St Mary's 150 m west is another little gem of a church from 10th C. It probably stood outside the monastic compound and was used by nuns.
• The Deer Stone 50 m south of St Kevin's is a bullaun - a stone with a basin hollowed in its top, naturally or by being used as a grindstone. Rain water collected in the basin and was supposed to have curative powers, so bullaun stones were places of pilgrimage. There was ancient metal-working in Glendalough and the Deer Stone may originally have been used to grind ores.
• 🌍 St Saviour's Priory (Glenlorcan or Regles), Knockfin (1 km down the valley from Glendalough). This was built in Romanesque style circa 1150, later than the main complex. It was Augustinian, though it may initially have affiliated to the Arrouaisian Order, briefly in vogue in the 1130s. The interior is intricately carved: look for the lion, serpent, and two birds holding a human head between their beaks. In medieval times other buildings were added to the church - it partly collapsed in the 19th C and was clumsily rebuilt, with the original stones incorrectly placed. (updated Aug 2020)

This is one km west of the Lower Lake; it has fewer buildings but is the more scenic. There's a large car park, run separately from the Visitor Centre car park so your ticket isn't transferable. If you've successfully elbowed your car into a parking space down there, best leave it and walk to and from the Upper Lake.

• The Caher near the car park at the east end of Upper Lake is a stone-walled enclosure, 20 m in diameter, of unknown date. A cahir is a prehistoric fortress but this may just be a sheep fold.
• Reefert Church is the first building along the lake south shore, in a grove. Righ Fearta means "royal burial place", ie for the O'Toole dynasty, but it's a simple church from 1100 with modern additions. There are two fine crosses nearby, then the scraps of another church.
• Poulanass waterfall is viewed from 100 m south. This is the river that divided the lake into two.
• St Kevin's Cell is the foundation stones of a beehive hut, on a rocky spur overlooking the lake.
• 🌍 St Kevin's Bed. This can be reached by a scramble down the hillside but it's perhaps enough to view it from the opposite shore. It's a cave in the rockface 8 m above the lake and 2 m deep, partly natural and partly man-made. It's reputed to have been a place of solitude and prayer for St Kevin and later St Laurence O’Toole, and may have been a Bronze Age tomb. It's barely a metre high, so about all you could do in there is sleep or decompose. (updated Aug 2020)
• Temple-na-Skellig is 40 m west of the "Bed", a 12th century ruined church on the site of St Kevin's first settlement. It's on a little shelf above the lake, with a hazardous scramble down the rock face to reach it. So realistically it can only be accessed by boat, but there are no regular trips.
• The southside path continues along the ridge, eventually looping round the head of the lake to the mining village.
• 🌍 Glendalough Mines were worked from 1825 to 1925 then from 1948 to 1957. They yielded galena, an ore of lead, and also some silver and zinc. Tunnels drilled right through the mountain to link with mines in Glendasan to the north. The area is littered with old machinery and the remains of miners' cottages. It's reached by a hike along the Upper Lake north shore, which eventually circles round onto the ridge above south shore.

• Laragh (An Láithreach, "the ruins") is the service village below Glendalough with limited sights of its own, but spare a glance for St Kevin's RC church and St John's C of I church. 200 m south of the village, Jackson's Falls are scenic and a test of kayakers' nerve.
• 🌍 Glenmaclure is a scenic valley south then west from Laragh. There's accommodation in the glen village. Easy hikes from here are Dwyer's or Cullen Rock, Fraughan Rock Glen and Carriglinneen. Stiffer hikes are Mullacor, Cloghernagh, Corrigasleggaun and Lugnaquilla, and beware that parts of the upper glen are closed as army training ranges. The road climbs over into Glen Imaal then descends towards Baltinglass.