You can't go wrong with Glendalough: its stories of Viking raiders, lost treasure, old mines, a love-struck woman and an ascetic saint, and probably the most beautiful scenery in Leinster, make it a must-see destination. Add to all that is a very attractive OPW visitor centre, with its wealth of information on the history, geology, wildlife, myths and legends of this spiritual and special valley. And if all that is not enough, take probably the longest prepared mountain pathway in Ireland high into the hills above the upper lake and back along its beautiful pine-clad north shore.
Start with an enriching visit to the visitor centre, and head off along the “green road” to the upper lake, admiring the smaller of the dá locha on your right as you go.
This is what I did on a mild winter day – the surrounding higher mountains kindly taking the gloom out of the damp southwesterlies for me.
I took the forest track up past beautiful Pollanass waterfall, following the white sign markers to the foot of a wonderfully constructed deep forest staircase of railway sleepers, all the way up to the top of the Spinc (or “pointed mountain”). Now, out of the forest, the effort all appeared worthwhile. I was on a long and high ridge running a little bit precariously between forest and a sheer drop into the upper lake; the high flanks of Camaderry with its ragged remnants of Scots pine were opposite me, and to my left ran the wonderful boardwalk, along the ridgeline and on over the high northeast spur off Lugduff mountain. It promised guidance and safety and a series of vantage points to stop and view and imagine and marvel. The immense depth of the trough below me, that is Glendalough, spoke of an Ice Age glacier, now long gone, and its battle with tough granite and mica-schist mountainsides, still with us but now wonderfully battle-scarred.
The spoil heaps of lead mining debris spoke of men, long gone too, who worked in the most awful conditions near the sheer granite slabs that are now, for us, a rock climbing playground.
On I went up over the Lugduff spur and down to the elegant footbridge over the Glenealo river. Here I thought of the monks who, having hidden precious monastic objects away upriver in wild Glenealo, were murdered by raiding Vikings, leaving the location of their cache unknown. Then it was back down by the tumbling river, along the beautiful wooded lakeshore, spotting Kevin’s bed opposite and thinking how the saint, demented by the attentions of a persistent and apparently beautiful woman, flung poor “Cathleen of the most unholy blue eyes” out of his bed to drown in the lake.
Now take the next boardwalk from the upper lake car park, through the inter-lake marshlands, and pick up the “green road” again briefly to the visitor centre car park.
