Day 25, Powerscourt waterfall – Dublin

Weather: ☀️🌤️🌤️☁️🌧️
Picnic: 🌯🌯🌯 (3 out of 5, nice grassy spot with sunshine to dry out the tent, still no special treats..)
Track: ☘️☘️☘️☘️☘️ (5 out of 5, cool and pretty, enjoyable walk, well maintained tracks, surprisingly ‘wild’ next to the city)
Memorable: views over Dublin and the sea!Campsite: ⛺⛺⛺ (3 out of 5 flat(!), next to a golf course, 2 km from the city)
Name of followed trail: Wicklow way
Special mention: our Hungarian fellow hiker with the Quechua tent. Kuddos to him for going on the Wicklow way with anyway, knowing that his gear sucks!!We woke up to a clear sky.

The moss was frozen and white, so it has been a cold night! Luckily our sleeping bags kept us toasty warm!

The tent is wet, so we leave it on the ground to freeze, so we can shake off the ice (that’s easier than shaking of the water). So we make our own snow when shaking the tent!

After breakfast we leave our spot and pass the 3 person Quechua tent that was already there yesterday. We’d wondered who would bring such a festival like tent on a trail like this… we find out it’s an Hungarian student who has good hiking equipment at home, but needed to buy student-friendly priced gear here when he decided to walk the Wicklow way. He hates the tent, but for €80,- he wasn’t going to complain to much 😂😂😂 What a good spirited guy this is! He knew the gear sucked, but he went anyway. This attitude will get him far!

We start with a steep uphill trail and then go down on a mellow, beautiful trail with great views of the Powerscourt waterfall. We really enjoy this trail, down, down, down. Ofcourse it needs to go back up again, and it does so, sometimes quite steep. We pass a lot of Garda (police) cars at a carpark. Its Garda dog training here! Marks favorite thing (not!)! We are assured that we will not become the chased subject, but Mark still climbs the hill slightly faster than he normally would…

A bit further up the hill (safely out of the paws of Garda dogs) we find a sunny place for lunch where we can dry out the tent a bit more. We have a chat with quite a few people coming down past us, it’s a busy spot!From here we continue up to Prince Andrews seat along a lovely rocky trail, with great views over Dublin’s Bay! We really are nearly there!

There is one more hill to cross, Dublin Mountain. Before we go up, we fetch water somewhere, because we decided not to camp in Marley park. We found out that camping in the park is ground upon in the city, so we won’t.A steep trail up Dublin Mountain leads us past a large group of hikers, whom we surprise with our answer to: “where are you going?”😅

On top, we go right, over the ridge of the hill and then down, through heather and forest. We’re surprised by the wild nature so close to the city! You can have great views over Dublin here, but now it started to drizzle and the wind makes it to cold to look at the hazy views very long..We continue down the hill and search for a flat campsite. We find one next to a golfcourse, where we can see people play from our tent!

We stay inside though, because the weather is nice for indoor things, like sitting under a blanket with some tea and writing this blog!