Ireland day 1348. Saturday 07 June 2025- Carriglineen DWC

Today’s summary	An early start and drive down to Glenmalure to join friends for a Club walk round Mullacor and Carriglineen. Very enjoyable but unseasonably cold. Good views (including North Wales), good company and lots of icy rain. Drove straight to the airport afterwards to pick up Val from her flight at 7pm. Pop pop curry and some TV in the evening.
Today’s weather	Cool and windy with heavy blustery showers. Strong north westerly wind. Appx 12c

Today’s overview location (The red mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The blue line shows where we walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Mullacor and Carriglineen DWC

Commentary

I had a relatively early start this morning, as I needed to meet friends at Glenmalure at 10am for a Club hike in the Wicklow hills. It’s at least a 90 minute drive from here, so I wanted to be away by 8:30 at the latest. In the end I made it, though it was a bit of a scramble to pull together my packed lunch, locate all my hiking gear and have some breakfast before heading down to the garage to jump in the car.

Once in the car park at the Glenmalure Inn, a worthy group of five of us met up and set off on our hike. Today the route took us on a clockwise circuit of Mullacor and Carriglineen, by way of the Shay Elliot car park.

Although the group was small, there was lots to chat about, so as usual it was sociable and enjoyable. The climbs weren’t too arduous and despite there being some quite long pathless sections, the going was mostly good.

On the other hand, the weather wasn’t very June-like. It was pretty cool – probably only in single figures on the tops – and a brisk wind was blowing most of the way round. There was no sunshine today which, when combined with the frequent heavy downpours, made it a rather cold outing. Someone quipped “we must come back and do this walk in the summer” – though it would be challenging to pinpoint exactly when that might be.

The upside to the rain was, though, that it left the air very clear, meaning we had good views all around, including as far as Holyhead Mountain and Snowdon / Yr Wyddfa in north Wales.

After stopping briefly for lunch in the meagre shelter of some pine trees on the slopes of Mullacor, we pressed on to the Shay Elliott car park and crossed the road. Once on the other side, we made an out-and-back detour to the top of Carriglineen and completed the loop walk back to Glenmalure via the valley round the back of the hill.

We were out for almost seven hours and although we only covered 18km, it felt like a decent workout. Once back at the cars, I bade my farewells and made a speedy exit to try and get to the airport in time to meet Val’s 7pm flight arrival.

I made the journey quickly, fortunately, and even managed to get a cup of coffee from McDonald’s as I waited. Her flight was pretty much on time, so we rendezvoused at Terminal 1 then drove back to Malahide.

She’d had a very successful, albeit brief, trip and it was great to have her back. The rest of the evening was reassuringly uneventful. For dinner, I had a pop-pop curry I found in the freezer, whereas Val just settled on a slice of chocolate cake. Then we watched some TV and finally called it a day at about 11pm.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Setting out up the Wicklow Way, near the Coolalingo Bridge	heavy rain heading our way from Lugnaquilla (in the clouds on the horizon)

Looking across the Glenmalure valley to the Carrawaystick waterfall, with the now-defunct zigzag path visible to the right	If you screw your eyes up and exercise some imagination, you can just make out Holyhead mountain on Anglesey, North Wales, floating on the horizon in the middle of the picture

About to summit Carriglineen	Almost back – the stream alongside the Glenmalure Inn

On the top of Cullentragh, before dropping down to the Shay Elliott car park