Distance: Just over 10 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: medium

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox

Countryside walk across the fields from the small town of Henley-in-Arden in central Warwickshire, to the towpath of the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal, and then along the canal bank to Stratford-upon-Avon the birthplace of William Shakespeare and home of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Walk crosses the Edstone Aqueduct, the longest cast iron aqueduct in the UK.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

To the Swan of Avon Down the Early 19th Century Superhighway

Stratford-upon-Avon and Henley-in-Arden, both market towns in central Warwickshire, have very similar origin stories. They were established in the 12th Century by feudal lords, during a great boom in market foundation, when lords were trying to increase the commercial potential of their land holdings and scope for extraction through setting up markets.

Both towns remained small trading centres serving their agrarian hinterlands, albeit not without affluent residents who were locally powerful, until the later part of the Early Modern period at which point their fortunes began to diverge.

In 1639 works were completed which rendered the River Avon – upon which Stratford sits – navigable between where it joins the River Severn at Tewkesbury, and Warwick. This, coupled with the increasing wealth in the form of both produce and rents extracted from the land through enclosure in the 17th and 18th Centuries, led to Stratford flourishing as a critical node in the midlands’ trading network.

The town’s commercial significance was cemented in 1816 when the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal was opened. This waterway running down from the West Midlands conurbation at King’s Norton Junction, where it connected with canals coming down from the coalfields, foundries and workshops of the Black Country, put the town right at the heart of the UK’s burgeoning canal network.

Meanwhile Henley-in-Arden by contrast, isolated from the waterways network, remained a small local centre servicing the mid-Warwickshire farmland surrounding it.

Stratford’s importance as a key centre for the transshipment of goods and the servicing of vessels proved short lived. The creation of the UK’s mainline railway network from the 1830s onwards, led to the UK’s economic and demographic geography taking on a shape much like it does today. Whilst the country’s inland waterways were far from dead by the middle of the 19th Century, the speed and carrying capacity of steam trains versus barges meant that far fewer staging points and service centres like Stratford-upon-Avon were needed.

As it happened Stratford-upon-Avon was connected to the railway network relatively late, with lines reaching it in 1859 and 1860. It was especially close to any important national railway lines, sitting instead amidst the spokes of an extensive rural branch line network serving farming communities. Meaning that in many ways the railway age returned it to a position comparable to that historically enjoyed by Henley-in-Arden as an important, but essentially minor, local centre.

Stratford did however, have a very particular card up its sleeve. This being its most famous of favourite sons – William Shakespeare. Whilst the railways did not bring vast trade in goods to the town, it did bring tourists. Pilgrims to the town where Shakespeare spent his formative years having thronged there since the 18th Century. It is perhaps unsurprising therefore, that when Stratford’s trading significance began to be eclipsed, that the town began pivoting towards grounding itself in the legend of its famed playwright the so-called “Swan of Avon”.

Today of course both Henley-in-Arden and Stratford-upon-Avon rather trade off their slightly off the beaten track location. Not just for tourists visiting the southern half of Warwickshire, but also in the development of the new built housing fringing the edges of both towns. Both towns are home to numerous transplants from the West Midlands conurbation and others, who move there seeking old timbers, rolling countryside and if they have children free grammar school education.

The walk between Henley-in-Arden and Stratford-upon-Avon largely runs down the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal towpath. This takes in much of the gently hilly and wooded landscape of what was the Forest of Arden. It also crosses the 145 metre long Edstone Aqueduct, constructed in 1813, which is the longest cast iron aqueduct in the UK, and many other examples of interesting canal infrastructure. The canal was one of the first to be restored in the 1950s and 1960s after a campaign by the Inland Waterways Association against Warwickshire County Council’s desire to officially close the canal to traffic so as to build a new road bridge. This campaign is commemorated by a plaque next to the towpath along the route.

The Walk

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the gpx. from Dropbox

I create the Walk Midlands routes via Ordnance Survey Maps Explorer enabling me to take them on my phone. Subscribe yourself via the banner above.

Henley-in-Arden has a station located on the Shakespeare Line which runs down to Stratford-upon-Avon. This means that it takes no more than about 35 minutes to get to the town from central Birmingham, and even less from suburban stations like Yardley Wood and Hall Green.

On exiting Henley in Arden Station.

First turn left and walk across the forecourt.

A short way down the road of early 1970s vintage houses you are walking along, you will see a footpath marker pointing along a snicket on your right hand side.

Turn right down this snicket and keep walking along the passageway.

You will cross the bottom of a cul-de-sac and keep walking down the snicket on the other side.

At this point you will pass a small recreation ground on your right, then cross a car park behind the back of some old buildings which serve as shops.

Walking down the entrance of this passage you will find yourself on Henley-in-Arden High Street.

Turn right when you reach the High Street walking in the direction of the rectangular tower of St. John’s Church, which stood next to the town’s black and white timber framed Guildhall.

Walk past these buildings and continue for several hundred metres down the High Street. The High Street is a key component of Henley-in-Arden being nearly a mile long.

Presently you come to a crossroads near the edge of the town. Here there are traffic lights.

Use these traffic lights to cross over the road.

Once on the other side of the road turn left and walk along the road.

Just before you reach the hill, near the edge of town, there is a gate on your right.

Turn through this gate and walk across the grassy field beyond heading for some farm buildings.

Upon reaching the farmyard head through the gate.

Walk along the track ahead of you with farm sheds on your right.

Having passed these you come to a metal footgate leading out onto a track running towards a farmhouse.

Just before you reach the farmhouse there is a gate leading onto an unpaved walkway between fields on your left.

Follow this walkway past the farmhouse.

This leads out onto a large field across which you can see a very long way. The path heads steadily left and is very clearly trodden.

Presently the path, still very clear and easy to follow, follows the course of the River Great Alne.

Eventually you come to a metal gate which you pass through.

This leads out into an open field.

You can see a hedgerow on the far side in the distance, as well as a house.

Cross the field heading to your right.

I found the path a bit less obvious to follow at this point.

Though presently I found it again.

Soon you come to a gate and style leading out onto a country road.

Once through the gate turn right and follow the road for a very short distance.

Presently on your left you come to a small layby.

In this layby there is a footpath leading off to the left.

Head down this footpath through some trees.

After a very short distance you reach the line of the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal.

Turn right here and begin walking along the towpath.

From here the remainder of the rest of the walk is entirely along the towpath.

One of the features of the route is a series of bridges across the waterway with a gap in the middle where tow ropes used to slot through the centre of the bridge.

After walking for some time you come to Wootton Wawen, a little canalside village with a large marina and narrow boat servicing yard.

Just after the Wootton Wawen marina you cross over a small aqueduct, quite similar to the enormous one that is coming up.

Some distance after Wootton Wawen you arrive at the northern end of the Edstone Aqueduct.

It is incredible to think that it is well over 200 years old, and that it was constructed only around 40 years after the world’s first iron bridge had opened up in Shropshire. The valley that the aqueduct crosses, has a little tributary of the River Alne running at the bottom of it, as well as the railway line between Birmingham and Stratford-upon-Avon. It also contains the remains of one of central Warwickshire’s once plentiful rural branch lines, which in this instance shut in the early 1950s.

After crossing the Edstone Aqueduct you continue on the towpath through a fairly quiet section of countryside.

Presently you approach the little village of Wilmcote. Wilmcote is home to Mary Arden’s House, a museum which recreates what the home of an affluent Warwickshire yeoman farmer was like in the mid-16th Century, on the site of a farm purportedly once owned by the family of William Shakespeare’s mother.

Wilmcote is also where a flight of locks runs downhill towards Stratford-upon-Avon.

Just after passing an old lockkeeper’s house, at the bottom of a fairly steep section of towpath, you are granted an excellent view towards Stratford-upon-Avon in the distance.

Continue on to the bottom of the lock flight and you approach the outskirts of Stratford-upon-Avon.

Keep walking along the towpath, crossing roads here and there and walking under bridges.

As you continue industrial estates and office parks give way to houses and shops.

Passing under a series of low bridges you reach the historic heart of Stratford-upon-Avon.

Eventually you step out under one final bridge into the Bancroft Canal Basin.

Ahead of you across a river side park is the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. To your left lies the canal basin where it intersects with the River Avon.

Getting Back

Stratford-upon-Avon has a fairly good bus service running up towards Redditch, Warwick and Leamington Spa. These can be caught from a little bus station arrayed around streets on the edge of the town centre, on the main road leading to the railway station. Stratford-upon-Avon also has a good railway connection to the West Midlands conurbation. Most trains are via Shirley in the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, then through Yardley Wood and Hall Green into Moor Street. Other less frequent trains go via Dorridge and Solihull and into Birmingham that way. There are several trains a day to London from Stratford-upon-Avon which go via Leamington Spa along the Chiltern Mainline.