May 30, 2007

The day started off not so bad. There were a few showers around. We headed out around 10:30 to do our “grand tour of Co. Wicklow”. The driving was quite easy and we made our way to Blessington. We stopped for a few minutes to have a look around, but it started to rain quite heavily so we went back to the car and continued on. We took the small road out to Valleymount and stopped a couple of times for pictures. In Valleymount we visited the church and walked down to the lakeshore. Once again a shower came over, so we left there and carried on into the mountains and through the Wicklow Gap to Glendalough. Unfortunately, due to the light showers and part fog, we were unable to see very far, but what we could see was exceedingly picturesque. It was in Glendalough that we had a very nice lunch in the Wicklow Heather Restaurant. Whilst there, we found a couple of newspaper articles dating back to 1952 when the Blessington valley was flooded, which made for interesting reading. The lunch was extremely good. We then carried on through Kilmacurragh and Rathdrum, stopping off at the Woolen Mill, where we picked up a couple of Aran wool sweaters. Then on through Glenealy and Rathnew and a detour out to Wicklow town. From here we drove up the coast road through Newcastle, Kilcoole and Bray and ended up in Dublin right on rush hour.In the evening we visited the Merry Ploughboy pub just south of the city and were treated to a show of Irish music and dancing following a very good meal.