Glendalough is a glacial valley in the Wicklow Mountains, about fifty kilometres south of Dublin, holding the ruins of a monastic settlement founded by Saint Kevin in the sixth century. The name means the valley of the two lakes, and the combination of the two is the whole point: an early Christian site of real importance sitting in a U-shaped glacial trough with a lake at each end of it.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, Roman Trail earns a small commission at no extra cost to you.
It is the most popular day trip from Dublin after the Cliffs of Moher, and that is how most people experience it: a coach, ninety minutes, the round tower photographed, back to the city. The site deserves considerably better. There are nine waymarked trails here, a genuinely demanding ridge walk above the Upper Lake, and an archaeological site that repays an hour of slow reading rather than fifteen minutes of photographs. This page is written for the longer version.
What Is Here
The monastic city is the lower site and it is free and open at all hours. Saint Kevin came here as a hermit around 540 and the settlement that grew after his death became one of the most important monastic centres in Ireland, raided by Vikings repeatedly and finally destroyed by English forces in 1398. What stands is substantial: a round tower about thirty metres high built as a bell tower and a refuge, the roofless cathedral, the small stone oratory called St Kevin's Kitchen whose round chimney-like belfry gives it the name, the Priest's House, and a gateway that is the only surviving example of a monastic entrance of its kind in Ireland.
The graveyard around it, in the third photograph, is still in use, which is the detail that makes the place feel continuous rather than archaeological: there are high crosses and medieval slabs standing among headstones from the nineteenth century and from this one.
The Upper Lake is the other half and is a kilometre and a half further up the valley. In the second photograph here. The lake sits under steep scree slopes and cliffs, with the remains of a miners' village at the far end from the nineteenth-century lead workings, and a smaller set of monastic remains including Reefert Church and St Kevin's Bed, a cave in the cliff face above the water where Kevin is said to have lived.
The nine trails are the real reason to stay longer and they are properly waymarked by colour. The Green Road is the flat lakeside walk that everyone does. The Spinc, the white route, is the one worth the trip: a boardwalk staircase up the south side of the Upper Lake onto the ridge, along the top with the whole valley below you, and down the Glenealo valley past the miners' village. It is about nine kilometres, takes three to four hours, involves a serious climb on wooden steps and is among the best short walks in Ireland. The Wicklow Way, the national long-distance trail, passes through.
Two practical points about the site. The visitor centre is small and ticketed and the monastic city is not, so you can see almost everything without paying; the centre has a good exhibition and a model, and is worth it in rain. And the two car parks are separate, one at the monastic city and one at the Upper Lake, with the Upper Lake one charging and filling early.
When to Go
May, June and September, and the single most useful piece of advice about Glendalough is about time of day rather than season. The coaches from Dublin arrive between about eleven and three. Before and after that the valley is quiet, and in summer with sunset after half past nine you can walk the Spinc in the evening and have the ridge essentially to yourself.
Spring brings the gorse and the bluebells in the oak woodland. September and October give the best colour, with the oak and birch turning, and the midges have gone. Summer is busiest and warmest at around sixteen to twenty degrees.
Winter, November to March, is cold, wet and often very beautiful, with the lakes black and the scree dusted with snow. The trails stay open and get genuinely slippery, the boardwalk on the Spinc is treacherous with frost, and the days are short enough that a nine kilometre walk needs an early start.
Wicklow mountain weather changes faster than the valley suggests, which is the recurring theme of the safety section. A mild still morning at the lower lake can be low cloud and driving rain on the Spinc ridge two hours later.
Getting There
There is no train. Glendalough is about an hour and a quarter from Dublin by road and the approaches are a car, a bus or a tour.
By bus, the St Kevin's Bus service runs from Dublin city centre to Glendalough twice a day in each direction, more in summer, and is the practical public transport option; it is a small operator rather than a national service, so check the current timetable and book. By car, the drive through the Wicklow Gap or over the Sally Gap is one of the best road routes in Ireland and is a reason to drive rather than take the bus, though both are mountain roads and the Sally Gap closes in snow. By tour, day trips from Dublin usually pair Glendalough with Kilkenny or with the Wicklow scenic drive, and give you about ninety minutes here.
If you want to walk the Spinc you need to not be on a coach, which is the practical consequence of all of the above: a three to four hour walk does not fit a day tour, so either drive, take the first bus and return on the last, or stay in Laragh, the village a kilometre away, which has accommodation and is the sensible base.
Is Glendalough Safe for Women Travelers
The FCDO publishes no advised-against areas anywhere in Ireland and no country-level warning, and its safety advice is among the shortest it writes for any country. What it does carry is that terrorist attacks in Ireland cannot be ruled out, that demonstrations and marches can happen with little or no warning particularly in cities, and that visitors should take precautions against bag-snatching and pickpocketing, with most incidents occurring in the larger cities.
County Wicklow is very safe and Glendalough is a managed heritage site with staff, a visitor centre, mobile coverage in the valley and a large number of people around for most of the day. A woman walking the valley trails alone is completely unremarkable and will pass dozens of others doing the same. The risks here are the mountain, the water and the weather, and they are real rather than theoretical.
The Wicklow Mountains produce more rescue callouts than almost anywhere else in Ireland and the reason is proximity rather than severity. These are not high mountains, Lugnaquilla is 925 metres, and they are an hour from a city of a million and a half people, which means they attract enormous numbers of walkers with no hill experience. Dublin and Wicklow Mountain Rescue responds to walkers who have gone up in trainers, in jeans, without a map, in deteriorating weather, and who have become genuinely hypothermic on a summer afternoon. The valley floor is a car park and the ridge above it is open mountain, and the transition takes forty minutes of climbing.
The specific hazards on the Spinc and the upper trails: the boardwalk steps are wet, mossy and slippery in any season and lethal in frost; the ridge is exposed with no shelter at all and the wind up there is a different wind from the one in the valley; low cloud arrives fast and the waymarkers are adequate rather than generous; and the drops on the lake side of the ridge are serious and unfenced. The countermeasures are ordinary: check the forecast for the ridge rather than the valley, carry a shell and a warm layer even on a fine morning, start early enough to finish in daylight, tell someone your route, and turn back when the cloud comes down rather than pressing on to the next marker.
The lakes are cold and deep and people drown in them. Both have steep shelving, water temperatures that stay low all summer because of the depth and the shade, and no lifeguards at any time. The Upper Lake in particular is a popular wild-swimming spot and has a genuine cold-water-shock risk, which is the mechanism that kills strong swimmers: the gasp reflex on entry rather than exhaustion. If you swim, go in slowly, stay close to the shore, and do not swim alone.
Irish drug law is far stricter than the country's reputation suggests. The FCDO states that possession of even small quantities of drugs, including cannabis, carries severe penalties, and that you should expect a long jail sentence and heavy fines for possessing, using or smuggling them, including when merely transiting through an airport. It also says plainly: do not offer to carry any item for anyone else when entering or leaving Ireland.
Two more. The mountain roads over the Sally Gap and the Wicklow Gap are narrow, unlit, and have sheep on them, and driving them in fog or after dark is the trip's real road hazard. And ticks are present in the Wicklow woodland and bracken, and Lyme disease occurs in Ireland, so cover your legs on the off-path sections and check yourself afterwards.
The Glendalough Packing List
Pack this as a mountain day rather than a heritage site visit, because the moment you leave the valley floor that is what it is.
Merino base layers, which are the difference on the ridge
Our merino base layers are 100% Australian merino at 17.5 micron, and a long sleeve merino wool base layer for women is what makes the Spinc comfortable. The pattern on that walk is a hard climb that makes you sweat followed by an exposed ridge in wind, which is the exact situation in which a cotton or cheap synthetic layer takes heat out of you. Wool insulates when damp. A merino base layer bottom is worth having from October to April.
A fleece, in every month
A Columbia Fast Trek fleece. There is no month in which the Spinc ridge does not want a mid layer, and in winter you want it plus the shell plus the base layer.
A waterproof shell with a hood that stays up
A Marmot PreCip Eco rain jacket. Wicklow rain is frequent and the ridge wind is strong, so windproofing matters as much as the waterproof rating. Carry it even when the valley is sunny, which is the single most repeated piece of advice from Irish mountain rescue.
Boots, and this is where a trainer genuinely fails
Merrell Moab 3 waterproof hiking boots with Darn Tough merino hiking socks. The Spinc is wet wooden boardwalk, then loose stone, then boggy ground on the descent through Glenealo. Grip and waterproofing are both load-bearing here, and ankle support matters on the stone section. The Green Road lakeside walk is fine in anything; everything above it is not.
The small things, and the first three are what rescue teams ask about
A charged phone, a paper map or a downloaded offline one rather than relying on signal, and enough food and water for four hours, because there is nothing above the lower car park. Add a hat and gloves from October to April, a head torch if you are starting late or walking in winter, and something to sit on because the ridge is wet. Midge repellent for summer evenings in the valley. And trekking poles help a great deal on the boardwalk descent, which we mention without a link because the only entry in our product register for poles has an unresolved product identity.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
Essential Resources for Women in Glendalough
Emergency numbers: 112 or 999 for all emergencies. For anything on the hills ask for Mountain Rescue, which in this area is Dublin and Wicklow Mountain Rescue, a volunteer team that responds to the Spinc and the surrounding ridges regularly. Mobile coverage is good in the valley and patchy on the ridge and in the Glenealo descent, which is the argument for telling somebody your route before you start. The Glendalough visitor centre and the National Park information point are both staffed and are the right first call for trail conditions and closures.
US State Department travel advisory: the Ireland advisory. Read the current level there directly rather than relying on a figure printed in any guide.
UK FCDO travel advice: gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/ireland, and read the safety and security page rather than only the landing page, because that is where the substance sits.
Main hospital: St Columcille's in Loughlinstown and St Vincent's in Dublin are the nearest emergency departments, both around an hour away by road, with Tallaght also reachable. There is nothing medical at Glendalough beyond a first aid point. That hour is the reason the hill precautions matter: a lower-leg injury on the ridge means a technical carry-off by a volunteer team and then a long transfer. Ireland has reciprocal healthcare arrangements with the UK and the EU, so a UK Global Health Insurance Card or an EHIC covers necessary state treatment, though neither covers repatriation or private care, and travel insurance remains the right answer.
Official health authority: the Irish Health Service Executive. Two local items. The WICKLOW MOUNTAINS generate a high volume of rescue callouts precisely because they are low and an hour from Dublin, so they attract walkers with no hill experience; hypothermia on a summer afternoon is a routine callout here. And TICKS are present in the woodland and bracken and Lyme disease occurs in Ireland, so cover your legs off-path and check afterwards
US Embassy: the United States Embassy in Dublin.
Official tourism authority: Tourism Ireland. THE MONASTIC CITY IS FREE AND OPEN AT ALL HOURS and the visitor centre is the ticketed part, so almost everything can be seen without paying. THE NINE TRAILS ARE WAYMARKED BY COLOUR and the white route, the Spinc, is nine kilometres and three to four hours with a serious boardwalk climb, which does not fit a day tour. The UPPER LAKE CAR PARK charges and fills early. Check trail conditions on the day
Carry a shell and a warm layer even on a fine morning. The valley floor and the Spinc ridge have different weather.
Tell someone your route before you start. Mobile coverage on the ridge and the Glenealo descent is patchy.
Do not swim alone in the lakes. They are deep, cold all summer, unlifeguarded, and cold-water shock is what kills strong swimmers.
Come before eleven or after three. That is when the Dublin coaches are not here.
Solo women safety assessment: Glendalough is a very safe place for a woman travelling alone. The FCDO publishes no advised-against areas anywhere in Ireland and no country-level warning, County Wicklow is rural and quiet, the site is staffed with a visitor centre and a national park presence, there are people on the valley trails all day, and a woman walking alone here is entirely ordinary. THE RISK IS THE MOUNTAIN AND IT IS GENUINELY UNDERESTIMATED. The Wicklow Mountains produce one of the highest volumes of rescue callouts in Ireland, and the reason is proximity rather than severity: they are low hills an hour from a city of a million and a half, so they attract large numbers of walkers with no hill experience, and hypothermia on a summer afternoon is a routine callout. The valley floor is a car park and the ridge above it is open mountain, and forty minutes of climbing separates them. On the Spinc specifically the boardwalk steps are slippery in every season and dangerous in frost, the ridge is wholly exposed with no shelter and a different wind from the valley's, low cloud arrives fast, the waymarking is adequate rather than generous, and the drops on the lake side are serious and unfenced. So carry a shell and a warm layer even on a fine morning, check the forecast for the ridge rather than the valley, start early enough to finish in daylight, tell someone your route because coverage up there is patchy, and turn back when cloud comes down instead of pressing on to the next marker. THE LAKES DROWN PEOPLE: both are deep with steep shelving, stay cold all summer because of depth and shade, have no lifeguards at any time, and the Upper Lake is a popular wild-swimming spot where cold-water shock, the gasp reflex on entry, is the mechanism that kills strong swimmers. Enter slowly, stay near the shore, never swim alone. The Sally Gap and Wicklow Gap roads are narrow, unlit and have sheep on them, which is the real driving hazard. Ticks and Lyme disease are present in the bracken. The nearest emergency department is about an hour away.
Reading On
Glendalough is almost always reached from Dublin and sits in a county worth more than a day. The Dublin packing list covers the city an hour and a quarter north, which is where nearly every visit here starts and where the hospitals and embassies are. Kilkenny, the medieval city that day tours most often pair with this valley, is not yet covered here. The Cliffs of Moher packing list covers the other great Irish day trip, on the opposite coast and with a far more serious edge. For the country as a whole the Ireland travel guide for women and the Ireland packing list carry the driving, the weather and the practical material in full. For why wool rather than cotton is what keeps you warm on a ridge after a sweaty climb, read the guide to merino wool base layers for women. Every destination we cover is indexed at the travel packing guide for women, and the base layers are at the Roman Trail collection.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
