Ireland day 1517. Sunday 23 November 2025- Knocksink 2 DWC

Today’s summary	Collected a friend from Donaghmede and drove down to Enniskerry for a Club walk in Knocksink woods. Very relaxed and the autumn colours were beautiful. Retraced our steps afterwards then had leftover Thai takeaway for dinner. Watched some more TV in the evening and got an early-ish night.
Today’s weather	Dry bright and breezy with plenty of sun. Moderate westerly wind. Appx 8c

Today’s overview location (The blue 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): Knocksink 2 DWC

Commentary

Today there was a Club walk scheduled from Enniskerry and, as it’s always good to keep up our social contacts, both Val and I wanted to go along. I last did this route three years ago and although it’s only a short walk, it ascends an attractive valley which always looks good in autumn colours.

So as soon as we’d had our tea and toast, we got up, collected our packed lunches (I made them last night) and got into the car. We drove to Enniskerry via Donaghmede, where we picked up a fellow-walker. Because of a remarkably quiet M50, we were in Enniskerry in next to no time. Plenty of time, happily, to get coffee and scones in the café before the scheduled walk start time of 12:00 (and we as it turned out we didn’t set off until nearly half past anyway, as a couple of walkers had notified us they were going to be late so we waited for them).

We set off eventually, walking up past the church and into Knocksink woods just beyond the bridge. It’s quite strange how, when you are on the road crossing the bridge, you are barely aware that it’s there, yet when you get down to river level and look up at the bridge, which we did on the way back, it’s really quite impressive (one of the pictures below shows it better).

Once in the woods, there were quite a few people out – being a sunny weekend afternoon – but it wasn’t unduly crowded. Normally, the Club walk includes a loop round the top of the glen, but it wasn’t possible to get right round today because part of the path had been washed out by a flooded stream a few days ago. So at the washout, we turned round and headed back the way we came. There wasn’t really anywhere perfect to stop for lunch – everywhere was very wet and muddy – so we just perched on the wall by the now-sadly defunct Knocksink Education Centre and had our sandwiches there.

We returned to the car park in Enniskerry via the bog meadow trail, which drops down to river level below the bridge. It makes an interesting alternative finish to the walk.

It was quite cold by this time so nobody felt particularly inclined to hang around. Plus, a no. 44 bus back to Dublin – which most of the walkers were taking back home – had just pulled in and was about to depart. Nobody felt like hanging around an extra hour for the next one.

The return journey, like the outward, was quick so even with a diversion via Donaghmede, we were back in the flat well before 5pm and it was actually still just about light. At that point we had a cup of tea but soon moved onto something stronger, which we enjoyed with reheated leftover Thai curry from yesterday. Now all that remains is to decide what we’re going to watch on TV to round off a wonderfully sociable day!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


The Kingfisher café – starting point for almost all of our walks in this area, and serving some of the best scones in Wicklow (apart perhaps from the Glendalough Green café)	Enniskerry church. It has a stone steeple, which must be extremely heavily and take quite some supporting

Rotting log in the woods – slowly succumbing to humidity and fungi.	The loop walk at the top of the glen was closed after a stream washout last week. It didn’t look too difficult to cross, but we decided discretion was the better part of valour, so we turned back at this point

The group today. There were nine of us (including me!)	Knocksink bridge over the Glencullen river. It was built in 1859 and for a long time it was the highest bridge in Ireland. Apparently if you know where to look, there are holes in it which were drilled during world war 2 times, so it could be dynamited in the event of an invasion (even though Ireland was neutral during the conflict)

Knocksink woods – looking good with a late-autumn carpet of golden beech leaves today. The woods are on the slopes of the Glencullen river ravine – gouged out by glacial meltwaters at the end of the last (and possibly also previous) ice age(s)