About Glenevin Waterfall
The Glenevin Waterfall is a quaint 40ft waterfall at the end of gentle, family-friendly path situated in the far north of Ireland not far from Malin Head (another site of Star Wars fame).
The walk involved a lookout as well as lots of miniature buildings that seemed to be a hit with photo ops as well as engaging the youth as well as the young-at-heart.
This trail is actually the result of the efforts of the late Doris Russo, who had retired to Inishowen from the state of Illinois, USA in the early 90s.
When she acquired this property, she didn’t know about the waterfall, but with the help of a neighbour named Michael Devlin, they cut through the bush to eventually reveal it.
Upon seeing the falls, Doris was determined that this feature should be accessible to everyone, and thus she started a community project to maintain the park.
Since then, a wide 1km path along the Glenevin Stream (though my GPS log suggested that we had walked about 900m each way or 1.8km round-trip) had become the main feature of the Glenevin Park.
Although the Glenevin Waterfall and its surrounding park is privately owned, our visit in July 2024 was actually free (this included parking as well as the visit itself).
That said, the park relies on donations to maintain this kind of arrangement, and it sounded like it’s a precarious arrangement due to a combination of a lack of volunteers and restrictions on who can participate in this project.
As for the excursion itself, it began from a gate with a donation box that went just past a Craft House and Ice Cream Parlour with adjacent toilets and a tea room.
From there, we pretty much just followed a well-maintained and gently upslope path with lots of picnic tables as well as cute, miniature buildings along the way.
At around 300m into this hike, there was a spur trail ascending up towards the left side, which went to a lookout peering over the town of Clonmany as well as the Rockstown Bay in the distance.
Continuing along the trail, it passed by more picnic tables and colourful miniature buildings before eventually reaching a bench and footbridge before the Glenevin Waterfall.
There was a plaque dedicated in the honour of Doris Russo here as well as signage discussing her importance to establishing the Glenevin Park.
But aside from taking pictures and being content with being around the waterfall, this was the turnaround point.
So overall, we spent around an hour away from the car, which included a detour to an overlook in addition to the Glenevin Waterfall itself.
Authorities
The Glenevin Waterfall is near the village of Clonmany in County Donegal, Ireland. It is currently privately owned but maintained by a combination of community members and the current owners themselves. For information or inquiries about the area as well as current conditions, you can try visiting the Inishowen Tourism Office website.
The Glenevin Waterfall resides in Glenevin Park near the town of Clonmany.
However, since the nearest cities or towns of note are either Londonderry (Northern Ireland) or Letterkenny, I’ll also describe the driving directions from these places.
From Londonderry, the most straightforward route would be to drive north along Strand Road towards the Pennyburn Roundabout (intersecting with Buncrana Road).
Taking the first exit of this roundabout onto the A2 towards Buncrana (as well as Letterkenny and Pennyburn), it becomes the N13 as we cross back into the Republic of Ireland.
Anyways, we’d then drive for about 3.3km from the Pennyburn Roundabout towards a roundabout with a branch leading to the R238 Road (towards Buncrana and Carndonagh).
Then we drove the R238 north for about 19km towards the town of Clonmany, where we’d then deviate from the R238 to remain on Main Street.
By now, there should be a sign for the Glen House and the Glenevin Waterfall, and we’d continue following the signs (which kept us on Main Street) for another 1.2km before reaching the car park on the left.
Overall, this drive should take no more than an hour.
If you’re coming from Letterkenny, then you pretty much just have to drive east on the N56 then keep left to leave the N56 to go onto the N13 at the Dry Arch Roundabout.
Once on the N13, then you’d drive about 4km to the next roundabout where the first exit remains on the N13 bound for Derry and Malin Head.
From there, we’d drive another 18km for the R239 Road on the left (pointing the way to the R238), and then we’d follow this connector road for about 2.7km onto its junction with the R238 Road.
Then, we’d turn left and drive on the R238 Road the rest of the 16km or so towards Clonmany and ultimately the Glenevin Waterfall as described above.
Overall, this drive would take about an hour or so.
For context, Clonmany is about 12km (about 15 minutes drive) west of Carndonagh, about 25 miles (under an hour drive) north of Londonderry(Northern Ireland), about 58km (about an hour drive) northeast of Letterkenny, about 100km (about 90 minutes drive) northeast of Donegal, about 95 miles (about 2 hours drive) northwest of Belfast (Northern Ireland), and 274km (about 4 hours drive) northwest of Dublin.
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Downstream to upstream sweep from the bridge before finishing the video on the near side of its banks
Left to right sweep from the far side of the bridge showing context as well as a closer look at the falling water
Right to left sweep from the near side of the bridge before walking across and doing another sweep from there
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