Close to Dublin, beside the Military Road (R115) in Glencree, is a beautiful mini-lakeland. Lough Bray is actually two lakes, Upper and Lower, gouged from the granite by a glacier millennia ago.
Park in the hamlet of Glencree, making sure you don't block any gateways, and walk up to join the Military Road and keep straight on. About 400 metres past a junction to the left look for an opportunity to leave the road and go right, up into the heather. The goal is to cross the heath, gloriously decorated in early summer with a sea of bog cotton, and get up onto the rim of the deep coum in which Lower Lough Bray lies.
Head for the rising ground and you will find rough paths in the heather that lead to the cliff-top. Great views open up behind of the long wooded valley of Glencree, with only Great Sugarloaf and Little Sugarloaf interrupting the sea horizon. Lower Lough Bray with its beach reveals itself to the left, under the jutting promontory of Eagle’s Crag.
Ahead, the top of the television mast at Kippure comes into view. The county boundary between Dublin and Wicklow passes through the 757-metre summit of Kippure, which is the highest point in Co Dublin.
The rough, peaty path gives you a bird's-eye-view of the lake below, and as you reach the south side of the lake the idyllic Lough Bray Cottage comes into view below. A much beautified and extended cottage orne of the early 19th century, it was originally built for a physician to Queen Victoria.
The arrival at Eagle’s Crag, the promontory that juts out between the two lakes, is a dramatic one. It’s a great place to admire the spectacular view, and to picnic on a granite slab that projects out over the lower lake. In clear weather Snowdonia in Wales is clearly visible on the Irish Sea horizon.
Now head south along the cliffs around Upper Lough Bray: the path, which becomes indistinct and very wet in places, drops down to cross a stream just below the road. Clamber up to the road and walk downhill a short distance, where, opposite a quarry, you leave the road again, going left down a pathway towards Upper Lough Bray.
There are some good sitting places in the heather along the lake, but our route goes right before reaching the lakeshore, and up onto the moraine above the lake. The path passes some large erratics dropped by the ice of the last glaciation, one of which so resembles a bed that it must have attracted interesting names in ancient times.
The path, much eroded in places, takes you along the top of the moraine and down past the lower lake to reach the public road again. Near the stream that flows out of the lower lake is a lovely picnic spot.
As you reach the road again to return to Glencree, the cottage on the left was a famous teahouse from the last decades of the 19th century. Here the playwright John Millington Synge boarded one summer to be near his beloved Molly, who was staying nearby.
Follow the road back to Glencree, where you can get refreshments from the friendly people in the Centre for Reconciliation.
Map: O. S. Discovery 56 Terrain: Open moorland, rough paths, wet in places, and tarmac road. Distance: 7km Accumulated ascent: 230 metres
Suitablity: Most hillwalkers in calm weather. Get there: The hamlet of Glencree is just off the R115, 14 km south of the village of Rathfarnham, Co Dublin
