6 to 9 km Hikes About 60 Minutes Easy Hikes

Bray to Greystones Cliff Walk

May 31, 2019

The Bray to Greystones Cliff Walk is a 7km easy walk from the promenade of the south Dublin sea front town of Bray to Greystones Harbour, following the beautiful coastal path.

This Bray Cliff Walk is ideal for people that don’t have a car and rely solely on public transport. You can take the DART train from Dublin. The journey will take just over 40 minutes. For this reason, the Bray to Greystones Cliff Walk is the perfect Sunday family walk for people that want to escape the busy streets of Dublin.

Whether you are a experienced hiker, a wild life enthusiastic, an artist looking for stunning scenery, a photographer or simply a mum or dad planning a family walk with your kids, the Bray Cliff walk is a just a wonderful place to walk.

Explore the full Bray to Greystones Cliff Walk profile below for trail map, Driving or train directions, and more tips and details to help you enjoy this adventure right at the doorsteps of Dublin.

And don’t forget to leave your own review of this walk right at the end of this post!

The Bray to Greystones Cliff Walk Snapshot


Hike Distance	7 km
Difficulty	Easy
Duration	Approx 2 hours
Total Ascent	124 m
Trail Type	Linear
Buggy	Buggy\pram friendly
Dogs	Allowed in leash
Hike Trail Map	Bray to Greystones Trail Map
Dublin Drive	50 mn
Dublin train time	43 mn
Driving Directions	Bray Dart Station Car Park
Beauty	Wildlife, bird-watching, cliffs, Sea, photography, picnics, railway

Bray to Greystones Cliff Walk: How to get there & trailhead

Bray Cliff walk Trailhead by car:

From Dublin City center, when traveling by car, the best option is the head south on the M50 motorwayfor 30 km. You merge then on the M11 for less than 2 km and at junction 5, take the R761 exit to Bray North. At the roundabout, take the 2nd exit onto Dublin Rd/R761 and stay on the R761 for about 1 km then take a left turn into Quinsborough Rd/R766. At the next roundabout, take the 2nd exit onto Florence Rd and you will be able park your car either on the promenade or at the Bray Dart Station Car Park.

Bray Cliff walk trailhead by train (DART)

The best option really is to take the DART train from Dublin to Bray. This option makes it easy for those without a car but even if you have a car, I will recommend to take the train as the journey will only take a bit more than 40 minutes from Pearse Street train Station.

The train also allows you to get back from Greystones to your car in Bray or all the way back to Dublin after the walk. But if you have time and if you are up for it, you can always walk back to Bray again if you prefer and enjoy an ice-cream or a fish and chips on the Bray sea front. Allow for a bit less than two hours each way.

Bray beach, ice cream after the walk to Greystones and back to Bray! …with 9 years old though Beaver Scouts!

Bray to Greystones: the Cliff Walk

The Bray to Greystones Cliff Walk is one of the most spectacular Cliff Walk just at the doorsteps of Dublin. The trailhead is at the DART train station located on the sea front of Bray. As soon as you come out of the train, start walking on the Bray promenade that starts from the harbour near Martello Terrace, the childhood home of James Joyce, and ends at the base of Bray Head, the a 241 m (791 ft) hill located at the end of the 1 mile long promenade.

Did you Know?

The Promenades date from 1859 during Victorian Era and was designed by William Dargan who took a long lease on land running parallel to the sea shore, cleared the stones and converted the area into a landscaped promenade. He also laid a road running parallel with the beach.

William Dargan built the Bray promenade and turned Bray into the popular seaside resort it has become today. His work earned Bray the title ‘The Brighton of Ireland’.

The promenade was built as a Grand Marine Parade with two bandstands, flowerbeds, palm trees and other amenities added later. The cast iron railings and seats added a distinctive air to the resort.

One of the people to take advantage of the growing status of Bray as a prestigious resort was the surgeon and antiquarian, Sir William Wilde, father of the playwright Oscar. In 1861, he built 1-4 Esplanade Terrace in the elegant style of Victorian architecture of the period. They were tall, three-storey houses over basements. Sir William Wilde also built another nearby house, Elsinore, which is now the Strand Hotel.

History taken from Bray and North Wicklow by Arthur Flynn

Once you reach the foot of Bray Head, just carry on on the coastal path that runs parallel to and just above the spectacular stretch of railway line that links Bray with Greystones.

This railway from Dublin to wicklow is really what build this fantastic Bray to Greystones cliff walk. Plans were designed in the 1840s to build a railway south to connect Dublin and Wicklow. The most straight forward way to build the railway would have been to go through Glen of the Downs, but however, Lord Meath, the landowner, did not want his land to be divided by the railway. So his compromise was to provid the railroad company the coastal land along Bray Head for free to construct the rail line built between 1847 and 1856.

If you are luck, you will be able to see the steam train that operate sometimes between Bray and Greystones.

Steam train Bray to Greystones Cliff Walk by Fearghal

As you can imagine, the engineering challenges were greater to construct the railway on the coast. So you wouldn’t be surprise if I tell you that the rail line is one of the most expensive stretches of railroad in Ireland to maintain due to rockslides.

Bray to Greystones Cliff walk: gorse flowers.

Keep walking along the coastal path. The trail is easy enough, with smooth and flat surface. I found that you will stop and watch this beautiful scenery quite often so you can expect you progress to be slow. At some point in the middle of this Cliff walk, it feels like you are miles away from any civilization.

It is a great walk for wildlife enthusiasts. The water around the Cliff has an exciting array of natives including dolphins, black harbour porpoises and basking sharks.There is a great numbers of nesting seabirds along the craggy cliffs below the path and at times the views down to the sea are almost sheer. If you look on the rocks you might be able to spot a colony of cormorants perched down there. Along the path, there are several boards along the path that provide good information about the sea life, birds and fauna that can be seen along the walk.

Bray to Greystones Ciff Walk

The last couple of kilometers of the the Bray to Greystones walk is not on the cliff. You can see Greystones beach and your final destination approaching. Once in Greystones, you will find excellent coffee shops and restaurants and you can get the train (Dart) back to where you started. or even better , walk back to Bray en enjoy an ice-cream on the beach front!