A Year of Peace

I thought this time I might give you a little more info about Glencree and the setup here. There are four main buildings: the Wicklow Wing (as described previously the place where the volunteers and interns live), the Bridge Building (which at the moment houses all the guest rooms, offices, and meeting rooms), the Centre Building (which at the moment houses only the dining hall and one large meeting room), and the Armory Building (which houses the coffee shop and exhibition.) There is also another section of builiding attached at a right angle to the armory building which at the moment is run down, but being turned into more guest rooms (at least I think.)

There is a ton of construction going on, so things have been moved around and will probably continue to do so. The Centre Building used to hold offices and some guest rooms as well, but now is heavily under construction, as thus mostly out of use. As stated above, a section of the Armory Building is going through heavy construction. There is also new construction of a section between the Centre Building and the Wicklow Wing that will eventually be all the offices. In addition to all of this the kitchen/group room in the Wicklow Wing is under construction. All of this definitely keeps everyone on their toes, but it is great to have the funding and the ability to do all this. From my understanding all of the buildings, and maybe the property, are owned by the government. I believe they are in trust as historic buildings, and thus Glencree just uses them, but this means all building also has to be approved from the outside as well as the inside, though funding comes from a variety of sources. You are probably now as confused as I am

The Armory/Coffee Shop runs independently of the other Glencree programs. You might wonder about the feasibility of a coffee shop up here, but it seems they do pretty good business. This is because of all the tours buses. There are many Wicklow Mountain days tours and they all seem to come through here, bringing with them many people to mill about for a bit. I've heard that some of the drivers will let you come along for the rest of the tour if they have room, though I wonder where you'd be let off at the end of the day