Overview:

Distance: 18km
Elevation gain: 550m
Format: Looped Trail
Time: 4 - 8 Hours
Start / End / Parking:
Nearly all of the Tinahely walks leave from the one car park, just south of the village centre, here. There’s ample parking, as well as electric car chargers.
Trail difficulty: Easy
This trail uses a mixture of lanes, forest tracks, and boardwalk.
Read about trail grading in Ireland here.
Trail quality: 4.5/5
This is what I would call a traditional Irish trail. It’s
Views: 3.5/5
Really wide variety of terrain and landscapes
Buggy/Wheelchair friendly: No
Dogs allowed: No
When did I walk this route: March 2024
External resources:

I first experienced the village of Tinahely in July of 2019, when Carl and I walked the Wicklow Way. It was the end of our first day on the trail, and as we settled into the town that evening we had great conversations with locals about the Wicklow Way and past characters who walked it.

It wasn’t long after this that I learnt that there are numerous looped walks all from this town, and I mentally marked it as somewhere that I wanted to come back to. While it may have taken four years longer than I initially expected, I was happy to be back as I drove through the village centre towards the trailhead.

Tinahely has a lot of trails.

When deciding which to walk, I picked Loop B from the Visit Wicklow website. This is a great website for information and GPX files. It was only as I approached the info board that things got a little questionable. As far as I can tell, Loop B is also known as the Four Bounds Loop, or the Orange Loop. As often happens across Ireland, information is updated in one location, but not updated at the same rate elsewhere. So trails can have multiple names, and different distances listed. Don’t let this put you off, the trails are often still amazing. But having the flexibility in your plans to accommodate trails that have adapted or changed will pretty much guarantee a better day out.

And for this particular day out, I was joined by Jen, long time Tough Soles supporter and just great friend.

We set off up towards the village, skirting east of the centre along a local road that slowly but steadily climbed up the side of the surrounding hills. As we leave the lane and enter farmland, we join up with the Wicklow Way, and I take the same photo of the trail junction that I remember taking almost five years before.

Heading left, we enter Mangan Woods. Sharing the path with the Wicklow Way, the trail is well worn in here, and we meander with it through the woodland. Being late March, the ground is soft after a wet winter, and as the trail combines with farm lanes Jen and I are left tip-toeing through soupy ground.

Still following the Wicklow Way, the route descends down towards the River Derry and the R747. We stop momentarily to have some chats with a pig at a gate before quickly crossing the busy road. The climb back up from this valley is steep but well maintained, with stepped boardwalk built through the forest. This isn’t the last time on this walk were Jen and I will share the general sentiment of I thought that south Wicklow would mean easy hills!

March is a rather harsh time of year to walk a trail - the sky is only beginning to brighten, and none of the spring growth has begun yet. Forests look brown and dull, and terrain can just be hard going. It’s a time I should really reserve for routes of higher altitude, where the cold and barrenness is part of the landscape, or head to the coast, where the wind will make you feel alive and energetic once more.

The final strong climb of the day is up to the summit of Muskeagh Hill (397m). Finally parting ways with the Wicklow Way, the trail turns up into the forest and climbs pretty directly towards the summit. From there it’s a quick descent down to the R749 just outside of the town bounds. Once back onto footpath the last few kilometres disappear as you make your way through the town.

There is clearly a lot of local passion and work put into developing and maintaining these trails. If you find yourself in the area, and are looking for some solitude, this is a nice way to pass an afternoon.

Wicklow, known as the garden county, is a spectacular place. It has a lot of trails and walking options, so the standard in this county is quite high. I think that this trail has utilised the best features that the surroundings have to offer, and is somewhere to go when you’re looking to escape the crowds of the more traditional Wicklow walking options.