The following is an excerpt from my trip journal during my 11 days in Ireland.

22 May 2009 22:15

Today was a great hiking day! We woke and ate breakfast at the hotel Unfortunately Peter wasn’t feeling well and elected to stay in for the day. It was a shame as the hiking was quite good.

We started out at Powerscourt Estate. This old house of Viscounts has gorgeous gardens behind it. There several themed areas (Italian, Japanese) as well as a nice pond. We took about an hour to walk through the gardens and take pictures.

Next we got back on the bus for the half hour drive to Glendalough. We started out walking around the monastic settlement. The ruins are quite impressive, mostly churches and a round tower. The settlement was founded by St. Kevin in the 6th century.

After spending an hour or so wandering around and learning about early Christian history in Ireland, we began hiking. We started on the “Green Road Walk” and hiked along the lower lake. There was a nice picnic area between the lakes and stopped for lunch. There we encountered our only notable rain. It only lasted long enough to put our rain coats on!

Next we hiked along the “Miner’s Road Walk”, moving up the west side of the upper lake. The gorgeous glacial valley stretched before us with a cascading waterfall at the end. It reminded me of a hike in Glacier National Park, although much greener.

There were remnants of mining operations at the end of the lake. A few walls of buildings remained and piles of tailings persist. We stopped here to shed layers before the climb out of the valley.

At this point we switched to the “Spinc and Glenealo” valley trail as we climbed up next to the waterfall. It was a fun climb, not too strenuous with the switchbacks. We even saw a couple rock climbers on a nearby cliff. There was a fair amount of wildlife as well. We saw several feral goats, a few deer, and a starling or two.

After climbing most of the way out of the valley we crossed the stream and the trail turned into a boardwalk. We climb the rest of the way up the Spinc and were rewarded with a great view of the valley!

The rest of the hike was relatively uneventful. We saw another deer and descended the boardwalk steps to the picnic area between the lakes. After a quick pit stop we went back to the van and returned to Bray, to find Peter feeling better.

Dinner was good and everyone was fairly tired from the ~8 miles of hiking (with ~300m of elevation gain).

All of the pictures from Day 2 are available here: Ireland Day 2: Powerscourt and Glendalough on flickr