What a way to start our first day in Dublin after a blissful sleep………….pancakes with fresh strawberries, clotted cream and real Canadian maple syrup…..if they were trying to win Kimbo's heart over, they did!

The girls took the day off and after digesting breakfast we were off on a road trip to Glendalough (Gleann Dá Loch, meaning "Valley of two lakes") a glacial valley in the beautiful Wicklow Mountains National Park. We did a walk around Glendalough Upper Lake (An Loch Uachtair). We skirted the lake and for the most part through the woods, there were little waterfalls about and it was really chilly under cover. Out in the open it was still grey skies and cold, but the Irish duo were down to t-shirts not long into the walk. At the end of Glendason valley, well as far as we could go were some pretty impressive ancient ruins of "Fiddlers Row" a part of Glendason lead mine (1798 – 1957), the conditions to say the least would have been extremely harsh. The hills were quite barren with signs about reminding walkers to take care of “rolling stones”…..how Irish, presumably due to the mining that had taken place but did have a lovely covering of heather but I could not imagine how cold it would have been in winter.

After a good walk it was time to think about lunch. But before that we took in the sight of the gorgeous Poulanass waterfall.
On our way to Wicklow Heather Restaurant we stopped at St Kevin’s church and monastery that dates back to about the 12th century. The round tower is amazing, it’s 100 feet high had six floors and the opening is 12 foot above ground level, clearly they didn’t want any visitors!

Time for lunch and a huge hearty meal was had at Wicklow Heather Restaurant in Laragh. We weren’t the only ones there, which surprised me for a Monday.

Then over the Wicklow Mountains we went on our way back to Dublin. The higher we went the worse the weather became, what started as a drizzle became a downpour and the low clouds were ominous. The poor bloody sheep were bedraggled and wet and I was half expecting it to snow at any moment….it didn’t. The road was a bit average at times, it felt very remote and again there was lots of heather about. Caroline did a great job and had us home completely unscathed.

Unfortunately while trying to transfer our first day in London photos across to the tablet they were lost. Kimbo and Caroline spent hours trying to work out what went wrong but to no avail. We now will have to rely on our memory…………….forever…..I am gutted.

Day two and the girls were back at work and we had the day to ourselves. We decided to catch the train called the DART to Greystones, a seaside town about 20km south of us. The DART was fantastic as it followed the coast. We had a wander around Greystones until we found Spendlove café, after a coffee and deciding that the chance of rain was slim we decided to walk the 6km cliff walk from Graystones to Bray.
The scenery was amazing and although the wind was freezing, it didn’t rain and I’m so pleased we took the chance. The track in places was narrow and hilly and the drop to the sea frightening but it was worth seeing the DART travelling underneath us and going in and out of the tunnels.

Bray naturally enough is another seaside town. The Porterhouse Bray Bar on the Strand was our first stop for a well-deserved drink…..well Kimbo decided it was time to try a few of the beers. All was going well until we decided to go for another walk and it started to rain, dodging showers and feeling hungry we finally found a chippy (in a dodgy back street) and had a late lunch of fish and chips, as you do when you’re beside the seaside.

We caught the DART back and arrived at the station just as the kids were coming out of school, we nearly got trampled by the stampede, and clearly there was no respect for their elders!!!! Managed to make it back to the apartment without getting lost.

Repacked our bags so we are only taking with us what we need when we take off tomorrow for our 2 week hire car adventure and discussed with the girls the “must sees”.