June 27, 1990: Roundwood to Glendalough
The Annamoe River from Old Bridge
Light rain had been falling on the bright flowers in the pots on the drive of Ballinacor House when we got up on the morning of Wednesday, June 27th. Mrs. Malone made some sandwiches, including some rare tuna fish ones for me, while Miss Malone, just before heading off for her summer job at the Glendalough Tourist Information Centre, served us our breakfast. Elizabeth was the last to finish this repast and reported that an insufferable Englishman had appeared just as we were about to leave – ordering everyone about in a very conceited manner. For some reason there was also a little French boy staying with the Malones as well.
We left at 9:15. There was no reason to hurry but I didn’t want to miss a pub at Laragh and an early arrival after a short day would give us time for a nice nap in Glendalough as well. The road back up to the Wicklow Way at Lake Park was not far away from the Malones and we were soon heading west uphill. Two gents on horses padded by us slowly on this ascent. We reached one junction, where a road from the village entered on our right but I remembered to keep to the left fork and this soon brought us to the top of our rise and another junction, where the Way was just coming down from the heights.
Gavan expressed a desire to do some route finding and so I turned over my xeroxed pages in their zip-lock bag to him and he led us downhill toward Old Bridge. We arrived here soon and had a rest on the abutment. I am afraid that the next stretch, along the road to Laragh, was not a happy introduction to route finding, because Malone favored a turnoff to the Brusher Gate that the officials in charge of waymarking had yet to recognize. We huffed and puffed over several hills on the road, nodding to farmers and waving away flies, disdaining raingear as a few drops fell, and chattering away – but the promised turnoff at the Wart Stone proved illusive. No such ancient monument, this one a sovereign cure for warts (if you applied to them water from the folds of the stone) was marked on the ground by any national agency, nor did any of the boreens heading uphill to the right invite public access. So we had to plug doggedly onward; I assured Gavan that at the very worst we could follow this road all the way to Laragh.
Just as we were beginning a descent toward this village, however, we were greeted by a large Wicklow Way sign and directed into a forest on our right. We had been following the official route after all and, as a sop to those who had been expecting to dip into the Wart Stone, some wag had provided another vessel at the start of the forest path – an abandoned toilet bowl.
Our path was a delightful one, though with the gray skies it was very dark in the woods. At a junction we were asked to ascend a ride line. After some climbing this reached a stile that put us out onto an open hillside, where we were asked to begin a descent to the left. I could see this stile on Malone’s map, so we were once again able to verify our position. However a shortcut through the bracken had been provided for our descent toward Laragh and we followed this only a short way before sitting down to lunch.
The view, which included the village and the Glendalough Valley, was magnificent. The problem was that there were some very dark clouds heading our way from the west and it was chilly on the ground. Consequently we did not linger long over our repast. Instead we bounced down to a corner of the hillside, climbed a stile into some woods, and followed a forest road out to tarmac. A left turn here lead to a “mass path” that headed for Laragh’s church by descending first to a stream – which we crossed by footbridge. The final approach to the village brought us by the school, identifiable first by the basketball backboards in the schoolyard. We reached the busy Glendalough road, but headed east into the heart of the village, with its cottages and tea rooms – Gavan having spotted the public bar at the Laragh Inn.
Two walkers were seated at an outside table and we took an adjacent one, but the weather, which was now cloudy bright, continued to produce some chill winds and so we went inside. Gavan and I had pints of Harp but Elizabeth would drink only a mineral water. After a nice rest we returned to the Jet Station, which also had a shop, and Gavan and I did some shopping for our next youth hostel adventure while Elizabeth sat outside with our packs, watching them pump diesel fuel into tour buses. Village children quarreled over how to spend their precious pence in the coke machine. We found everything we wanted a bit more quickly this time; this included some sauce for the next day’s spaghetti and some coke bottles, Gavan’s favorite candy.
After loading our purchases into our packs we continued west on the Glendalough Road, passing more restaurants and an elaborately shaped hedge and continuing on tarmac for over a mile into one of Ireland’s most beautiful valleys. Soon we could see the famous round tower, the grandest of the many ancient medieval monuments that have been preserved here. There was a lot of traffic on the road. Tour buses would whiz by and we could see the drivers speaking into their microphones: “On the left you will see three crazy people walking the Wicklow Way.”
A little hamlet was awaiting us as we turned off the road and its most prominent feature was the Royal Hotel, our resting place for the evening. We were shown our rooms but I rejected the first of these on the grounds that the double contained only one bed; a twin was soon located at the front of the hotel. We agreed that we would do our laundry, take a nap, and meet at 6:00. We had arrived after only a nine-mile day at 3:45 – so there was plenty of time to do this.
Gavan and I had a room so newly decorated that it still smelled of paint. It was without any ornament and the roller blind in the bathroom wouldn’t stay down unless you tied it down. One of the tap handles was broken and water leaked from it when we filled the bathtub. I had brought some liquid detergent and we threw all of our dirty underwear and socks into the suds. Gavan complained of sore hands after wringing his things out and I actually worked up a painful blister on my right thumb doing the same. We put wet wash all over our room but I began to have my doubts that anything would dry by the next day. (Elizabeth, by contrast, had a sunny window and all of her things did dry.)
A visit to the monastic ruins in Glendalough
Gavan then took a nap while I listened to my walkman and took a bath. The two of us also had time to visit a gift shop across the street, though we didn’t buy anything. When we all met again at 6:00 the clouds had all but disappeared and we had an absolutely lovely sunny afternoon to stroll about the valley floor. We passed the tower and some church ruins first, some Celtic crosses in the graveyard, and used a footbridge to attain the Green Road, a delightful path that lead westward on the southern side of the valley. There weren’t too many tourists about at this hour, though two children did manage to clout one another before they were separated by the rest of the family.
I was actually doing some scouting on this expedition since I intended to climb directly back to the Wicklow Way from Glendalough – rather than return to Laragh and then undertake a long southern loop before the Way returned to overlook this dramatic scene below. Two routes were known to me, one along the stream that gave birth to the Poll an Easa waterfall (recommended by Fewer) and one on a zigzag path recommended by Malone. Gavan and Elizabeth left the Green Road to climb up to a cliff face with caves opposite the reedy lower lake while I pressed on slowly; they had caught up with me by the time I had located the start of Malone’s route. Together we continued forward to the Lugduff Brook but here we discovered that the trail recommended by Fewer was closed – and so we got only a glimpse of the last few feet of the waterfall. It would be Malone’s route the next day.
The upper lake, Glendalough
We were now opposite the lovely upper lake; watercourses could be seen feeding this tarn as the sun sparkled off the undulating waters. We returned to the hotel along the north side of the valley, using roads mostly, passing cottages whose front gardens were bedecked with tall lupines.
It was close to 7:30 now and we were shown to our table in the dining room. Some retired businesswomen from Chicago were a few tables away; they spent most of the evening complaining about the high cost of legal fees. They said they were doing the Wicklow Way but some of them could barely walk without an arm to lean on so I didn’t know what that meant. There was a lovely view of a stream crossed by the hotel footbridge outside our dining room window. Gavan and Elizabeth had trout, managing to get over their squeamishness when the fishes arrived with their heads still intact; I ate a steak. There were some yummy desserts.
Gavan was called away at one point to talk to his folks, who were vacationing in Ireland; Elizabeth called her father collect; and I called Dorothy as well. We sat for a while in our room listening to my Greatest Hits of Rock and Roll tape on Gavan’s speakers. Then we went into the adjacent pub. Here Elizabeth surprised me by drinking a whole pint of lager. As usual there was nothing but football on the telly; we had to hear about every goal scored in the competition so far. Finally, at about 11:00, we went upstairs to our beds after a lovely and successful “rest day.”
To continue with the next stage of our walk you need: