Dublin city centre is the starting line for one of Ireland's great mountain roads, and the contrast could hardly be sharper. Around O'Connell Street and the Liffey the city hums with buses, trams, cyclists and pedestrians; within an hour you can be on a single-track road across empty bog, with only sheep and skylarks for company. That is the joy of the Wicklow Mountains, rising just south of the capital.
The city has history on every corner. The General Post Office on O'Connell Street was the headquarters of the rebels during the Easter Rising of 1916, and its columns still bear bullet marks. Trinity College, south of the river, holds the Book of Kells, a ninth-century illuminated manuscript, and the old Georgian squares and streets, with their brick houses and colourful doors, are among the finest in Europe. The pubs, the music and the literary tradition, from Joyce to Beckett, are part of the city's character.
The Military Road, the R115, starts at Rathfarnham, in the southern suburbs, and runs south through the heart of the Wicklow Mountains to Aughavanagh. It was built by the British army in the years after the 1798 rebellion, to give troops access to the mountains where rebels like Michael Dwyer were hiding, and it was one of the first roads to cross the area. Today it is a superb ride, crossing high bogland at the Sally Gap, passing the waterfall at Glenmacnass and descending to Laragh, near the ancient monastic site of Glendalough, with its round tower and lakes.
The roads in the mountains are narrow, with tight bends, crests and dips, and the surface can be rough, with potholes and loose gravel. Sheep wander on the road, and the sky can switch moods in minutes, with fog and rain on the high ground. Traffic is light during the week, heavier at weekends, especially near Glendalough. Getting out of Dublin takes patience: the traffic is heavy, and the suburbs stretch far to the south.
Dublin has every service, and it is the place to fill the tank before heading south, because there is nothing on the high part of the Military Road. Roundwood and Laragh, in the mountains, have small shops and pubs, and Glendalough has cafes and a visitor centre.