Glendalough

We headed about an hour south of Dublin to the Wicklow Mountains National Park. It was a rainy/misty day and was definitely an early test of Steve’s driving abilities with a manual transmission and driving on the left.

As you can see, there is no center line on the road above, but it IS a two way road. It is about 1 1/2 cars wide, so when you meet a campervan…

… one of you pulls into a wide spot in the road, to allow the other to pass. This is easily done in wide open spaces, as you can see above, but it gets much trickier when you are on a narrow road between two high hedgerows or stone walls! (I’ll hopefully have a visual example of this later)

We stopped at Glendalough to get in a long hike (8 miles), and we didn’t have time to explore the ruins of an old monastic community that we walked right by.

The hike started easily enough…

… past a small lake,

… before reaching the bigger lake -

We climbed past a waterfall that showcased the variety of greens that I have been going gaga over, throughout this lovely country -

… and continued upward…

… where we met a climbing buddy -

I later found out that this is a Sika deer, which is a species originally from Japan, and was introduced by a rich landowner in the mid 1800’s as a “decorative addition”.

Looking back as we climbed upwards, the small lake is nestled in the valley -

As we reached the ridge, the “trail” became these boards with slightly elevated cable staples in them to provide traction. This was particularly welcome, as the day remained damp.

We proceeded along the large lake for a number of miles…

… meeting some more friends..

… as we continued along.

We had a brief moment of clearing, so we could admire where we’d come from…

… as well as how far we still had to go -

As we descended (we had climbed about 1800 ft), we saw yet some more furry friends but they remained at quite a distance.

This part of the hike was much rockier, but we had our finish in sight (although still several miles away) -

Finally, flat ground!

This was the last shot I got, as the rain decided to come down in earnest for our last 2 miles back to the car.

The yellow flowers are on gorse bushes, which are widespread throughout the country, and are a thorny evergreen.

Tata for now!