There are many roads into Wicklow county, but only one worth taking. It begins unpromisingly, snaking out of Dublin through the grimier southern suburbs, then, with barely a warning, it rears up the side of the mountain until the city is swapped for a landscape of wilderness. Heather blazes purple to the skyline, cuts of peat gouge the bog and sheep scatter indignantly as the car approaches.
The R115 was built by the British military in 1800 so that they might easier roust rebels from the hills. In an Ireland where such landscapes are disappearing beneath scar-tissue development, the road remains a sanctuary. It twists southwards past the gleaming hump of the Sugar Loaf, through the expanse of the Sally Gap and circles over the midnight-black waters of Lough Tay, known as the Guinness lake because of the family’s mansion on its shores and the white sand they imported to create a beach which, from above, makes the lake shore look like a pint of the stuff.
Past there, we descended through the gentler landscapes of the vales of Clara and Avoca and beyond the village of Aughrim towards our own safe haven. It is a village, approached at a crawl over the narrowest of bridges; it has a pub, a bakery, a phone box and a brewery and is called Macreddin — an ancient name, though only one of its buildings dates earlier than 1999.
Its centrepiece is the four-star BrookLodge hotel, perhaps Ireland’s only wholly organic resort. It is owned and run by three brothers, Eoin, Evan and Bernard Doyle, who agreed to ”do something together” in the mid-1990s. Eoin was in marketing after various jobs running pubs and nightclubs, Evan ran an organic restaurant, the Strawberry Tree, and Bernard was a property dealer.
The first job was to find a suitable site. ”We got out the ordnance survey map and circled every bridge,” says Eoin. ”We felt it was important to have a bridge. And it had to be in a valley. Then one Good Friday with nothing better to do — the pubs were all closed — we all set off in separate cars and found half-a-dozen places we felt were suitable. This was the best of them.”
The BrookLodge nestles in tranquil rusticity on the floor of a sloping valley. The setting is important because the theme of Macreddin is one of escape, a self-contained haven where 10 ways to relax lie within a two-minute walk.
Next door to the pub and microbrewery, there is the organic store and smokehouse. Next to that is the masseuse, and across the courtyard the new spa centre. The hotel’s crowning glory, however, is its restaurant, the Strawberry Tree, which was moved wholesale from Killarney when the complex opened.
Dinner did not disappoint: a rack of lamb dissolved in the mouth, vegetables burst with flavour — anyone suspicious of the organic movement as an excuse for price-hiking might well be converted. The dining room is an elegant sweep of decadence, the service attentive and efficient.
Next day, a fuzzy head was banished by organic smoothies for breakfast and a horse ride from Macreddin’s stables. For the more energetic, off-road driving, archery, clay-pigeon shooting, hot-air ballooning and, bizarrely, hovercrafting can be secured for a price.
Slightly further afield are two of Ireland’s best-sited golf courses (Woodenbridge and Druids Glen), the stunning silver sands of Brittas Bay and the achingly beautiful Glendalough that boasts the early Christian ruins of St Kevin’s monastery.
Then, it was back towards Dublin, the drive across the heathered heights just as good in the opposite direction. — Â