Expat Travel Mom

This was part of two massive road trips across Ireland and Northern Ireland together, over nine weeks and well over a thousand miles. If you're planning to follow similar routes, or just have the time for it, this post covers Wicklow, Wexford, and Kildare specifically. The rest of the trips are broken out separately: Northern Ireland, The Wild Northwest, Dublin & the East, The South & West, and Connemara & the West.

Enniscorthy Castle

Enniscorthy gave us Enniscorthy Castle which turned into a real highlight, a genuine Norman stone castle you can actually walk through, with centuries of history layered into every room. It's a little interactive in that the kids are welcome to dress up in attire at the beginning of the self tour, so that they can play the part in the castle. It was really fun for them. And an umbrella street! Who doesn't love an umbrella street!

Adventure Centre Near Wexford

We also spent a morning at IOAC, a camping and adventure centre south of Dublin near the Wexford coast, doing their ropes course. We didn't stay overnight on the grounds, just came through for the course itself, but it was exactly the kind of high-energy, physical break a family needs in the middle of a trip full of castles and museums. I am not one for heights, so I barely made it across a couple before I asked to come down, but the family loved doing it all!

Greystones, a Lavender Farm, and a Fairy Trail

A genuinely lovely seaside town along the Wicklow coast, Greystones gave us a relaxed harbor-town afternoon, the kind of easy coastal stop that balances out a trip full of mountains and monuments.

Next, one of the sweetest, most unexpected stops. A working lavender farm tucked into the Wicklow countryside, with a proper fairy trail winding through it, tiny painted doors and hidden little scenes built right into the roots and hollows of the trees. Exactly the kind of place that turns a good family trip into an unforgettable one for the kids.

Tonelagee and the Heart-Shaped Lake

Our big hike of this leg of the trip. Tonelagee stands 817 meters tall, the third-highest peak in the Wicklow Mountains, and its Irish name, Tóin le Gaoith, translates rather bluntly to "backside to the wind," which tells you everything you need to know about the conditions up there on a bad day. We had better luck. From the summit, we made our way over to see Lough Ouler, a genuinely heart-shaped lake carved out by glacial erosion on the mountain's northeastern slope, sitting below a dramatic 200-meter cliff. Seeing that unmistakable heart shape from above, in the middle of the Wicklow Mountains, made every bit of the climb worth it. (It's not a gentle hike...be warned).

Golfing in Rosslare

A quiet morning at Rosslare Golf Club along the coast for my husband and son, was exactly the kind of easy, unhurried round that fit perfectly into a road trip already packed with castles and hikes. The girls and I were happy to relax at the Airbnb (no longer listed, sorry).

Hook Lighthouse, Duncannon Fort, and a Beach Full of Donkeys

Hook Lighthouse sits at the very tip of the Hook Peninsula, and it's genuinely one of the oldest working lighthouses anywhere on Earth. Some sources call it the oldest operational lighthouse in the world, others rank it a close second behind Spain's Tower of Hercules, but either way, this medieval stone tower has been guiding ships for roughly 800 years. The current structure dates back to the early 1200s, built by William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, after monks had already been keeping a beacon burning here for generations before that. It wasn't even automated until 1996, meaning real lighthouse keepers lived and worked at the top of those 115 stone steps for the better part of eight centuries.

A short drive up the coast brought us to Duncannon Fort, a dramatic star-shaped fortress built in 1587 in response to the threat of the Spanish Armada, and later swept up in the 1798 Rebellion as well. The kids also enjoyed petting the donkeys nearby. Below it, Duncannon Beach gave the kids time to climb, run and just have fun. There also happened to be an antique car show on the beach that day too!

Seal Rescue Ireland

Tucked into Courtown Harbour, Seal Rescue Ireland is the only seal rescue and rehabilitation centre in the entire Republic of Ireland, caring for sick, injured, and orphaned grey and harbour seal pups from all along the Irish coast before releasing them back into the wild. We toured the facility and learned the individual rescue stories behind several of the seals currently in their care, and the kids ended up adopting a few of their own favorites, a small symbolic sponsorship that helps fund the hospital's real work. Worth knowing, and honestly reassuring, direct touching and patting isn't allowed here, this is a genuine rehabilitation center focused on getting these animals healthy and back into the ocean, not a petting attraction, and that's exactly the kind of animal encounter we want to be supporting.

Irish National Stud Farm and the Japanese Gardens

A detour heading the other direction out of Dublin took us into County Kildare, the true heart of Ireland's thoroughbred industry, and the only working stud farm in the country open to the public, Irish National Stud Farm. We wandered past paddocks of retired champions and stallions worth staggering sums, but the real showstopper was the Japanese Gardens next door. Built between 1906 and 1910 by Japanese master horticulturist Tassa Eida and his son Minoru, at the request of the eccentric Colonel William Hall Walker, the garden is designed to walk you symbolically through the entire "Life of Man," birth, childhood, marriage, old age, death, and the afterlife, told entirely through trees, water, stone, and winding paths. It's considered the finest Japanese garden in all of Europe, and walking through it after a morning around the horses gave the whole day a strange, lovely balance between raw energy and total stillness.

Wicklow, Wexford, and Kildare rounded out the trip with exactly the mix we didn't know we needed, castles, coastline, a mountain with a heart-shaped secret, and gardens built to represent an entire human life. A fitting close to three weeks that gave us more of Ireland than we ever expected to fit into one trip.

These were our two big road trips.