Mid-term break… Kids off the school for one week… Parents took couple days off work… Holiday home near Glendalough National Park booked for few nights… All set up for a long weekend out… And… CRAP!!! The weather forecast warning about another storm over the tiny island of Ireland. Have you ever noticed, that storms and hurricanes are more than likely to hit the island over the weekends, when you are off work. Coincidence? I don’t think so 🙂

But we were in a huge need to change our environment, even if we had to stay for the whole weekend inside the Ladybug Chalet (the name of the place we stayed in). But we were lucky enough to get couple of hours a day of a relatively good weather a day, that we could go for a stroll around Glendalough.

Valley of two lakes (the meaning of Glendalough) is a beautiful valley in co. Wicklow. It is also the name of the Early Medieval monastic settlement founded in the 6th century by St. Kevin. For all, who are interested in the history of the place, this is where you can find out more -> http://www.glendalough.ie/

On this page I would like to share our experience while walking this beautiful place with kids… a lot of kids this time 🙂

Couple of weeks ago, while meeting our friends, we had a short exchange of thoughts (not a fight, but it was close 🙂 ) about the most stunning places in Ireland. During the conversation it turned out that they never have been to co. Wicklow. In that case the destination of our next trip came out automatically – Glendalough. And the preparation began.

The most important – accomodation. www.booking.com where we found a really nice spot around 20 minutes drive from Glendalough. The Old Rectory Donard (https://theoldrectory.ie/) met all of our needs. Especially that our team had 4 adults and 5 kids this time. We stayed in The Ladybug Chalet where we had a lot of space for the kids to go bananas and for the adults to sit down and relax in the evening playing cards and discussing the plan for the next day. Lovely host that welcomed us on the arrival, the accommodation with really good equipped kitchen, cosy and comfortable beds , friendly dog Axel, chickens running around, peace and quiet – all of that adds up for the high recommendation if you need a place where you can slow down and re-charge your batteries.

During our stay the weather forecast was not really great, but we got couple of hours of sunny spells a day, when we could go and enjoy the destination of our trip. The days were very windy but as the Valley has couple of trials (across and around) we had a chance to pick those where we could have a quite uninterrupted walk. In the Information Centre you can get a small map with all the walking routes explained with the difficulty and the amount of time needed to finish the walk. The trails are really well prepared and, some of them, are buggy and wheel-chair accessible. Our NOT-PRO tip for walking in the area like this – wellingtons and rain gear for the kids and plenty of spare socks (both for children and adults) 🙂

That was not our first visit to Glendalough. But every time we are there we are discovering more new things that only assuring us that this is our place on Earth – the views, the aura that filling us that badly needed energy. Even the air tastes better down there:) And we will return to Glendalough another day.

And I hope that we planted a small seed of love to Wicklow Mountains in our friends. The place cannot be higher recommended.

Glendalough – OUR PLACE ON EARTH.

Some more photos on our FB page -> Glendalough