Our First Hike in Ireland

Our friends Justin and Shawna came to visit for a long weekend and wanted to see some of the Irish landscape. I was thrilled to have an excuse to go for a hike in Ireland! The drive took us on some pretty narrow roads. It seemed like there were close calls every time we passed an on coming car. Turns out that's just how close the road is!

We went to a place called Glendalough (translated from Irish it means valley of the two lakes). It's the largest glacier formed valley in Ireland. A few of our tour books said it was the most popular outdoors tourist attraction in the country.

The hike started at a monastic village with buildings from the 10th to the 13th centuries. It was also a cemetary with graves from the 1700s to 2004. We got some pictures of some really cool Celtic cross grave stones.

The oldest structure on the site is a small old cathedral built in the 10th century. Apparently there was a second addition built 200 years later in the 13th century. By the time the second addition was built, the Norms had invaded and brought a Roman architectural influence with them. You can tell by a Roman window in the later addition when there are hints of Roman architecture in the earlier structure.

The hike was probably 6 or 7 miles long. We walked along both lakes in the valley to an old quarry setting. I was expecting to see some wild life along the way. We had been walking a while then up on our right we say a dozen mountain goats. I knew we'd see something, I just didn't know what.

As we started to get out of the valley and began to reach the higher elevation of the valley the ground became more and more wet. Soon we found a set of what looked like railroad posts lashed together to serve as an elevated path. The posts were wrapped with chicken wire and held down with large nail/staples for added traction on the wood. They referred to this as the boardwalk. We were told it was an easy very safe hike if we stayed on this boardwark.

The views as we walked along the boardwalk became more and more incredible. As we were looking down on the two lakes we were looking at the views we saw on all the post cards from Glendalough. It was really a beautiful place.

Here is a link to the official Glendalough site and here is a link to Glendalough on Wikipedia.