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There's nothing much to WICKLOW , seventeen miles south of Bray, but it is the first place that wholly escapes the influence of Dublin as you go down the coast. It's a pleasant, ramshackle town with plenty of entertainment, one or two good, cheap places to eat, a couple of smarter places on the fringes of the town, and walking and swimming, too. It has none of the presence you might expect of a county town and comes across as a happily disorganized kind of place, full of people chatting on pavements, cars parked on double yellow lines and solidly built houses in bright marine pastels. Two minor squares form the town's core: Fitzwilliam Square, where you'll find the tourist office ; and Market Square, where a spirited memorial to the 1798 rebel Billy Byrne grabs your attention. Byrne, born into a wealthy Catholic family, led rebels from south and central Wicklow during the 1798 Rebellion, but was eventually executed at Gallow's Hill in Wicklow town . Around fifty yards from Market Square on Kilmantin Hill stands Wicklow's Historic Gaol , originally built in 1702 to hold prisoners under the repressive penal laws, and now converted into a tourist attraction (April-Sept daily 10am-6pm; www.wicklow.ie/gaol ; GBP4.20/?.33) offering a very lively re-creation of the life of the prison. The gaol looks at the part it played in the lives of those involved in the 1798 Rebellion, and those transported from here to the Penal Colonies. Just outside town on the seaward side, a knoll encrusted with some knobbly piles of stone constitutes all that's left of Black Castle : one of the fortifications built by the Fitzgeralds in return for lands granted them by Strongbow after the Anglo-Norman invasion of 1169, and all but demolished by the O'Byrnes and O'Tooles in 1301. Wicklow Head really is spectacular, and you can walk all the way round (there are two tiny swimming beaches) accompanied by exhilarating views of the open sea and, northwards, the weird silhouettes of the Great and Little Sugarloaf mountains. There's also sociable, if unglamorous, swimming near the harbour breakwater closer to the centre of town.
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