The Bray Cliff Walk: What's Open, What's Closed, and the Bray Head Loop

If you have read about the Bray Cliff Walk, the coastal path that hugged the foot of Bray Head all the way to Greystones, here is the thing you need to know first: it is closed, and it has been since February 2021. Repeated landslides made it unsafe, and the reopening timeline runs to years rather than months. Do not go looking for a way around the barriers. The cliffs above the old path are exactly the problem.

That out of the way, Bray Head is still very much worth your boots. The open route is the Bray Head Loop, a roughly 5.5km circuit that starts at the southern end of the seafront and climbs the headland to the large white cross at the top, put up for the Holy Year of 1950. It is steeper and more exposed than the old coast path, so wear proper footwear and bring a layer, but the reward at the top is a clean sweep over the town, the bay, and the Great Sugar Loaf inland. On the way up you can detour to the ruins of Raheen-a-Cluig, a twelfth-or-thirteenth-century church and the oldest structure in Bray.

If your plan was really to walk between Bray and Greystones, the practical answer now is the DART. Bray Daly is the southern terminus of the line, but some services carry on to Greystones and cover that hop in a few minutes. Walk the Bray Head Loop for the views, then take the train if you want to see the next town along. It is not the same as the cliff path, but it is open, it is honest, and it works.