Glencree, and on

Climbing the hill on the other side, suddenly I rounded a curve and Powerscourt waterfall came into view.

I carried on along the path, and at the top of the waterfall hit the one bugbear with this walk: tree clearance. I don't mind walking through trees, and I don't mind walking across moorland. But here, vast areas of trees are being felled, and it feels like walking across a World War 1 No Mans Land. The path becomes very hard to see, and tree stumps could easily be leg breakers.

As I passed the top of the waterfall, I passed to walkers going the other way. Not talkative types though, just a vaguely germanic "Hello".

Then I started up the biggest mountain on the route, Djouce Mountain. It's big, and dark, and covered in cloud at the top. It started raining as I went up, but it was a hot day, so it was actually a blessing. I stopped just on the other side for a fig roll lunch.

I'd seen the Dublin lads in the distance just before, so I decided to push on and catch them up (it's nice to have a target to break up the day.)

So, I went switly up the hill, then at the top along a sort of raised planking thing which protects the moor from walkers. It makes for really fast walking, with fabulous views over the whole range, and I was soon looking down on the next valley, and running down the hill.

Sorry about the cheesey grin!

The lake in the bottom pic is in the bit of the Wicklows still owned by the Guinness family, and as far as I can tell still pretty much off-limits. It's a shame, because it looks like one of the nicest parts of the whole thing (no surprises there.)

I did catch up to the Dublin lads...you can see the edge of one of their sandwich wrappers in one of the photos. They had a looong way to go: I tried to break it to them that at the pace they were going they wouldn't get to Glendalough before about 8pm. I don't know if they made it, that was the last I saw of them. Maybe they are still wandering lost in the mountains....

Roundwood is not the nicest place in Ireland. It's a very small town expanding quickly, like most of Ireland. It's functional rather than pretty, and I wouldn't recommend it to visitors except for walkers. One of the pubs does serve interesting food, which may be German or Scandinavian, the latter I suspect. Lots of cold smoked dishes anyway. Good food, but not what I was expecting. Dessert was a very nice blueberry pancake though.

You know you're in trouble when your B & B landlady introduces herself with "welcome to Fawlty Towers!". Not the nicest place to stay, sort of run down. The shower worked fine until I switched it on, then fell off the wall. Getting clean thus became a sort of juggling act, as it wasn't the sort of shower you could hold easily, more prop in place.

written by  martin_b on April 24, 2007 from Roundwood, Ireland
from the travel blog: Eastern Ireland
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