Vartry Lakes Golf Club

Roundwood sits at roughly 800 feet above sea level in the Wicklow uplands, making it one of the highest villages in Ireland. That elevation shapes everything about playing golf here — the air is clean and sharp, the light shifts quickly, and the surrounding landscape of moorland, granite outcrops, and the Vartry Reservoir gives the setting a genuinely wild, open quality that lowland courses simply cannot replicate.

Vartry Lakes draws its name from the river and reservoir system that has supplied Dublin's water since the Victorian era, and that body of water is a constant visual presence on the course. Wicklow is often called the Garden of Ireland, though up at this altitude the character leans more toward highland exposure than pastoral softness — expect wind to be a factor in almost any condition, and expect it to change direction without much warning.

For golfers who want a round that feels removed from the everyday, County Wicklow's inland courses offer something genuinely different from Ireland's celebrated links coastline — a rougher, quieter, thoroughly compelling alternative.