About Crumlin Glen Waterfalls
Crumlin Glen Waterfalls pertain to at least a couple of modestly-sized waterfalls that I encountered while walking along the Crumlin River.
Now contrary to what the search engine results and TripAdvisor might lead you to believe, this excursion is really more of a Nature and Heritage Walk than a waterfall attraction.
In fact, I’d argue that the vast majority of waterfalls on this stretch of the Crumlin River marginally counted as waterfalls as the largest ones were probably on the order of 3m or 10ft tall.
Heck, the most noteable of the waterfalls in the glen (see photo above) was either man-made or man-modified.
Anyways, the name of this glen was derived from the Irish word Cromghlinn, which is said to mean “crooked glen”.
The Crumlin River flows west from the foot of Divis Mountain towards Lough Neagh, which is a large lake just to the west of the Belfast International Airport.
As far as the Nature Walk was concerned, the glen featured a pocket of woodland mixed with some blooming wildflowers.
The tree cover kind of came in handy on the day of my visit because I showed up on a day that was raining fairly heavily so the river took on more of a brownish tinge.
There’s a bit of heritage involving the Crumlin Glen as a landlord named Rowley Heyland had built flour mills, which were among the first in Northern Ireland.
A curious relic of the history of Crumlin Glen was the Cockle House, which was a sort of hobbit-hole-like arched abode built beneath beech trees with a view of the glen’s main waterfall.
It was said to have been built for a Muslim servant who was favoured by the landlord, and thus the structure was said to have been built facing Mecca.
Now, the house entrance was blockaded so I couldn’t get the view of the waterfall that the servant must have seen, and attempting to scale the barriers to get to the other side wasn’t a good idea either.
Overall, I wound up spending about an hour away from the car, where I had walked a roughly 2km loop that I’ll describe below.
Trail Description
From the Crumlin Glen car park (free of charge; see directions below), I had to take one of the ascending paths towards the north side of the lot.
While it’s tempting to go straight down the seemingly more obvious path down towards the Crumlin River, the path ultimately dead-ends in either direction.
So you’re better off going up to the Woodland Walk, and then following the elevated path going west deeper into the glen.
After about 150m from the car park and just after going past a signed gate (which I’d imagine would be closed outside of opening hours), there was a signed fork.
By the way, the Crumlin Glen gate is open from 07:00-19:30 from April to September and from 08:00 to 18:00 from October to March.
Anyways, the path on the left descended towards the Cockle House while the path on the right stayed elevated and skirted the glen’s boundaries.
This fork pretty much marked the start and end of the loop walk, and I opted to go left first so I’ll continue the trail description in this manner.
About 70m from the fork, the path reached the man-modified or artificial waterfall, which was the Crumlin Glen’s main one.
There was some kind of diversion or parallel channel flowing beneath some slippery metal grates (so that might make scrambling further downstream tricky, especially if it’s raining like it was during my visit).
Continuing down the Riverside Walk part of the trail for about another 200m (the path descended steps), it ultimately got to an angled view of an intriguing natural cascade (maybe about 3m or so tall).
At this point, the trail went another 500m or so as it went past a footbridge (leading south along a tributary of the Crumlin Glen) towards a signed trail junction at the far end of the glen.
Continuing further downstream along the river ended up being blocked by fencing indicating that we had reached a private property boundary.
So this was pretty much our turnaround point, but instead of going back the way I came along the Riverside Walk, I instead climbed up the steps towards the Woodland Walk.
From there, I then followed this elevataed walk back to the car park to complete the 2km or so loop walk of the Crumlin Glen (though you could cut this distance in half if you’re only pursuing the waterfalls).
Authorities
The Crumlin Glen Waterfalls are in the town of Crumlin in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. It is owned by the Department of Culture, Arts, and Leisure and it’s managed by the Rivers Agency. For information or inquiries about the area as well as current conditions, you can try visiting the Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council website.
The Crumlin Glen Waterfalls are within the Crumlin Glen in the town of Crumlin, which is actually just to the south of the Belfast International Airport.
Since the nearest major city is Belfast, I’ll start with the driving directions from there.
However, we also came to Crumlin from Glenoe (essentially close to Larne) so I’ll also describe the driving directions from there.
So from Belfast, the most direct route would be to make your way over to the A52 near Ballysillan suburb via Crumlin Road (A55).
However, you have to keep in mind that the traffic just to get out of the city centre can get pretty intense on this route.
Nevertheless once on the A52, you pretty much just follow this road for a little over 10 miles to the town of Crumlin.
Once in Crumlin, we approached the signed turnoff underneath a railway bridge on the right, where there’s a narrow single-lane (easy-to-miss) entrance.
That led right to the car park for the Crumlin Glen.
Overall, this drive should take around a half-hour without traffic, but with traffic, it could get up to an hour.
As for getting to Crumlin from say Larne, we’d drive southwest on A8 towards Ballyclare, and then we continued on the A57 for under 12 miles towards the Belfast International Airport.
Then, we headed south on the A26 towards the A52, and then we followed the A52 into Crumlin, where once in town we got to the single-lane entrance underneath the railway bridge for the Crumlin Glen.
Overall, this drive took us a little under an hour.
For context, Crumlin is about 15 miles (over 30 minutes drive depending on traffic) west of Belfast, about 26 miles (over 30 minutes drive) southwest of Larne, 47 miles (over an hour drive) south of Ballycastle, about 51 miles (over an hour drive) southeast of Portrush, about 61 miles (about 90 minutes drive southeast of Londonderry (or Derry), and 175km (about 2.5 hours drive) north of Dublin (Ireland).
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Brief right to left sweep of a natural cascade downstream of the Cockle House
Downstream to upstream sweep from the caged channel showing the extent of the cascades before ending up with the man-modified rectangular waterfall
Brief profile sweep of the man-modified waterfall fronted by a caged channel
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