Top Things to Do in Wicklow, Republic of Ireland

Poulaphouca is a small but historically resonant townland and waterfall site situated in County Wicklow, in the eastern foothills of the Wicklow Mountains. The name derives from the Irish "Poll an Phúca," meaning "the hole of the pooka" — a reference to the shape-shifting supernatural creature of Irish folklore said to haunt the dramatic gorge through which the River Liffey thunders. The site is most famous today as the location of the Poulaphouca Reservoir, also known as Blessington Lakes, one of the largest artificial lakes in Ireland, created when the valley was flooded in the late 1930s and early 1940s as part of a major hydroelectric scheme. The reservoir supplies drinking water to a large portion of greater Dublin and generates electricity via the Liffey Hydroelectric Scheme, making this quiet corner of Wicklow one of the most practically significant engineering achievements in twentieth-century Ireland. Before the flooding, the valley contained thriving farmland, several villages, and the celebrated Poulaphouca Waterfall itself — a spectacular three-tiered cascade on the River Liffey that attracted tourists, artists, and writers throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The waterfall was a mandatory stop on the Romantic tour of Wicklow and was sketched and painted by numerous artists. Travellers including Thomas Moore are said to have visited the falls, and the raw, churning spectacle of the Liffey plunging through a narrow basalt gorge made a deep impression on all who witnessed it. The original village of Poulaphouca, along with the villages of Baltyboys and Burgage, was submerged when the valley was flooded, and the displaced families — some three hundred households — were resettled, a piece of social upheaval that still resonates in local memory. The waterfall itself did not entirely disappear with the reservoir. A reduced but still impressive fall continues to flow through the gorge just below the Poulaphouca Dam, and it remains visible and accessible to visitors. When water is released from the reservoir in sufficient volume, the falls reclaim some of their former ferocity, and the sight of white water crashing through the dark rocky gorge is genuinely arresting. The sound alone — a persistent low roar that builds to a crashing thunder when flow is high — gives the place an atmospheric intensity that connects the visitor to the awe felt by earlier travellers centuries ago. The gorge is narrow, the rocks are black and smoothed by millennia of water, and the surrounding vegetation leans over the chasm in a dense curtain of green. The Poulaphouca Reservoir itself, seen from the right vantage point, is a surprisingly beautiful body of water. Its irregular shoreline follows the contours of the original valleys and hills, giving it the appearance of a natural lake rather than a constructed one. On calm days the surface mirrors the surrounding Wicklow hills and the wide Irish sky, and the area has become popular with walkers, cyclists, and anglers. A forest park and looped walking trails have been developed around parts of the shoreline, offering peaceful, relatively easy walking with occasional views across the water. The landscape here sits at the transition between the open bogland and moorland of the higher Wicklow uplands and the softer, more pastoral scenery of the lowlands further east and north. The broader area around Poulaphouca is rich in things to see. Blessington, a handsome estate town with a wide main street, lies just a few kilometres to the north and serves as the main local service centre. The Wicklow Mountains National Park is easily accessible to the south, with Glendalough, one of Ireland's premier heritage sites, reachable within half an hour's drive. The Hollywood Glen and the Glen of Imaal are close by, and the Georgian splendour of Russborough House — one of Ireland's finest Palladian mansions — sits near the northern shore of the reservoir and is well worth a visit in its own right. The entire region has a depth of historical and natural interest that rewards slow exploration rather than a single targeted visit. Getting to Poulaphouca is straightforward from Dublin. The R756 and surrounding roads connect the area to the N81, which runs between Dublin and Baltinglass. The reservoir is roughly fifty kilometres southwest of Dublin city centre, making it feasible as a day trip. Bus services connect Blessington to Dublin, though a car gives far greater flexibility for exploring the reservoir loop and the waterfall viewpoint. The falls are best viewed after periods of sustained rainfall when the river is running high and the ESB (Electricity Supply Board) is releasing water through the dam. In dry periods the falls can be considerably reduced, though never entirely absent. The area is accessible year-round, but the Wicklow light in spring and autumn is particularly beautiful, and summer weekends can draw considerable numbers of walkers and day-trippers to the forest park and lakeside paths. One of the more haunting details of Poulaphouca's story is that during prolonged droughts or low-water conditions, remnants of the submerged world have occasionally emerged from the reservoir — old field boundaries, road surfaces, the foundations of long-drowned farmhouses, and even fragments of the original bridge. These ghostly reappearances of the lost landscape have a peculiar power, reminding visitors that beneath the placid surface of the lake lies an entire erased world. The folklore of the pooka, tied to this place for centuries before it was flooded, adds another dimension: in Irish tradition the pooka was associated with waterfalls and river crossings, liminal places where the boundary between the ordinary world and something stranger felt permeable. Standing at the gorge at Poulaphouca, with the water roaring below and the mountains rising behind, that ancient sense of the uncanny is not entirely difficult to feel.