Powerscourt Mountain

Short and easy hike up Powerscourt mountain today. It has a huge areal on top so there is a asphalted road leading to the top making the normal muddy experience of going up a Wicklow mountain a lot easier. Some great views of Dublin, Bray and Sally Gap with the mountains behind. You could see almost all my previous hikes.

It’s about 740 meters high but it took me only about 1,5 hrs up and down again because you can park quite high up. Unfortunately you couldn’t hike to the cliffs with the two lakes below due to the amount of very wet peat/bog in between. Very worthwhile walk quite near Dublin very good if you’re a beginner and want to test whether you like it.

Keadeen Mountain

It is in the south of the Wicklow Mountains and about 650 meters high. I started out at Dwyers McAllister cottage which is an original Irish cottage where two Irish rebels were cornered by the English in the late 18th century. One of them drew fire to let the other one escape by standing in the doorway.

It wasn’t a good day for hiking as there were low clouds so I didn’t get any of the great views :-(. It is a plateau mountain which means that the top is more or less flat, this unfortunately also means that the water up there is stagnant and the ground therefore very boggy.

Discovered a beautiful stream running down the mountain on the way down and followed it’s course down to the road. There was no path and it was a lot of slipping and sliding but the beauty of the stream was worth it.

Lough Tay over Djouce Mountain to Powercourt waterfall

And back…..phew. Long hike today with strong winds but not too cold. Djouce Mt links up Lough Tay to Powerscourt with great views of all my previous hills. As always in the Wicklow Mountains some great views all the way from Dublin to Greystone and the sea. Was absolutely nackered afterwards. 

One good thing though: I saw the mountain rescue in action and it does give me some confidence that they will get me of the mountain if anything ever happens to me. There were about 14 of them hiking up the mountain when I was on my way down and they had enough gear with them to build an entire hospital up there. I hope they got the injured person of ok.

Lough Tay and Luggala mountain

I went hiking around Lough Tay in the Wicklow Mountains today. Unfortunately the area around it turned out to be owned privately and therefore it wasn’t possible to go where you liked. However you were allowed to hike some of the areas. I went up mountain Luggala which is actually one of the few places from where you can see the lake.It is about 580 meters high and the trail up is a track straight up the mountain, despite it being cold I was sweating quite hard by the end of it. I shared the mountain with a large herd of deer only, not a living soul in sight! From here you can also hike to Lough Dan which is supposed to be pretty too. One of my favs will definitely come back here.

Little Sugarloaf Mountain

Yeah, I have my new camera so I hope the pictures are better now. I still can’t be bothered to photoshop them. After having enjoyed the Sugarloaf Mountain so much I did the little version of it today. It is in between Bray and the Big one. Short but lovely walk with a bit of searching for the way up. Pretty cold today so I got to field test the gloves and woolly hat my wife bought for me.

Bray to Greystone

I tried a a new route today from Bray to Greystone along the track that runs above the train tracks that run along the coast and were built by Brunel. On the way back I took the higher route through the Wind Gate that leads to Bray’s Head with some great views on the cliffs, the Wicklow Mountains and Bray itself.

Nice 9km hike with some climbing.