Enniskerry Itineraries
Half a day or a full weekend. Here are the best ways to spend your time in Enniskerry, planned step by step.
Whether you have a few hours or a full weekend to explore, these itineraries give you a local’s route through Enniskerry. Each one links directly to the restaurants and activities along the way.
Half a Day in Enniskerry: the Square and the Gardens, on Foot
The version of Enniskerry that does not involve moving a car twice. Breakfast on the Square, walk the two kilometres up to Powerscourt, do the garden circuit, and come back down for lunch. It works because the village and the demesne are genuinely walkable from each other, which most day-trippers never find out because they drive from one car park to the next. It deliberately leaves out Powerscourt Waterfall, which is a separate site with a separate ticket 7km away and does not fit in a half day alongside the gardens.
- 108:30·45 minutes
Breakfast at Poppies on the Square
Poppies opens at seven, which is the single most useful fact about mornings here. Take a table before nine and you get the village version of the Square: deliveries, school runs, the same four people at the counter. Come at eleven and you get the queue.
View Poppies - 209:15·30 minutes
The clock tower and a lap of the village
Ten minutes around the Square before you go anywhere. The 1843 granite clock tower with its copper cupola, the mock-Tudor terraces built for Powerscourt's tenants, and the pull up Church Hill to St Patrick's. It takes almost no time and it is the difference between seeing a car park and seeing a planned estate village.
View The Square and the Clock Tower - 309:45·2.5 hours
Walk up to Powerscourt and do the gardens
Two kilometres uphill from the Square, about twenty minutes, on a road that loses its footpath in places, so walk facing the traffic on the narrow stretch. Arrive near opening at 9.30am and you get the Italian terraces and Triton Lake before the coaches. Allow two hours for the full circuit including the Japanese Gardens and the Walled Garden.
View Powerscourt House & Gardens - 412:30·1 hour
Lunch at Avoca in the house, or back down for a pint
Avoca's Terrace Cafe is on the ground floor of the house and is free to walk into without a gardens ticket, so it is the easy option. If you would rather be back in the village, it is downhill all the way to Mac's Bar or the Enniskerry Inn on Church Hill.
View Avoca Terrace Cafe at Powerscourt
A Full Day in Enniskerry: Waterfall, Woods and the Village After Five
A day built around the fact that Powerscourt is two places, not one, and that Enniskerry is at its best once the last coach has gone. It takes the waterfall in the morning while it is quiet, the free view of the same waterfall from above on the Crone Wood loop, the village wood in the afternoon, and the Square in the evening. You need a car for the first half of this, or a taxi and a plan.
- 109:30·1.5 hours
Powerscourt Waterfall at opening
Drive the 7km out to the waterfall entrance, which is not the gardens entrance, and go in at opening. Opening is 9.30am from May to August and 10.30am for the rest of the year, so shift this day later outside the summer. Tickets are sold at the gate only, around €8 for an adult, and the falls run hardest after rain. Sit in the meadow with a coffee before anyone else arrives.
View Powerscourt Waterfall - 211:15·3 hours
The Crone Woods and Maulin loop
Ten minutes' drive from the waterfall gate to the Crone Wood car park, then the waymarked 6.6km loop: forest road, a section of the Wicklow Way, Ride Rock looking straight across at the waterfall from above, and the open ground of Maulin. Sport Ireland grades it strenuous and there is about 350m of climbing, so this is boots and a waterproof.
View Crone Woods and Maulin Mountain Loop - 314:45·1 hour
Late lunch in the village
Back to Enniskerry and eat. The Enniskerry Inn on Church Hill serves food through the afternoon, which matters after a mountain loop, because Poppies has stopped serving hot food by mid-afternoon and Emilia's does not open until five.
View The Enniskerry Inn - 416:00·1 hour
Knocksink Wood below the village
Walk down out of the village into the ravine on the Glencullen River. Knocksink is a statutory nature reserve, about 52 hectares of sessile oak and wet woodland with springs and boardwalk sections, and it is the walk the village does rather than the walk the coaches do. An hour is plenty.
View Knocksink Wood Nature Reserve - 518:00·2.5 hours
The Square, empty
This is the part that day-trippers never see. By six the demesne has closed, the coaches have gone back up the N11 and the Square belongs to the village again. A pint outside Mac's facing the clock tower, then dinner at Emilia's, which opens at five and is the only proper evening room in the village.
View Emilia's Ristorante
Ready to plan your visit?
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