Getting Some Bray Head Space

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It’s amazing how easy it is to develop a blind spot to all the beauty spots that are just on our doorstep.

It must be at least 10 years since we headed up to the cross on Bray Head, and given that it’s one kick-ass view up there, we’re really not sure why it’s been so long.

Just an easy one-hour, round-trip trek gets you from the Southern Cross roundabout up to that spectacular spot and back. You can cut up through the woods there, or take the path at the start of the Cliff Walk over on the other side of the hill.

Whichever way you come at it, having the whole of Bray, both Sugar Loafs, and beyond, to the Wicklow Hills to the west and Dublin to the north, it’s a 791ft viewing rock that’s remarkably easy to conquer.

Especially on a sunny Sunday, with the sound of a wedding band giving it some major welly outside a Bray seafront pub wafting up into the balmy air, and with a hang glider cautiously readying himself for take-off.

Gotta check this place out on Good Friday too, when, traditionally, hundreds of people make the pilgrimage to the concrete cross perched on high, first having been placed here in 1950 to mark holy year. Constructed by voluntary labour under the direction of Christopher Dodd & Sons, the Very Rev Canon Moriarty blessed the completed cross in front of 5,000 local parishioners.

Bray Head must have some great wi-fi coverage too, given that just about every fecker there was checking their phones.

You can find out a little bit more about Bray itself in our extensive and rather fine history of the town here. 

You can check out our Bray archives here, Katie Taylor tackling Bray Head here, and you can find a whole lotta locals treks in our Take A Hike section right about here.