Distance: around 8 miles

Difficulty of the Terrain: easy

Get the Route: via Ordnance Survey Maps

Walk from Whitlock’s End Railway Station on the Stratford-upon-Avon Line, along 4 waterways (2 canals, 1 river, 1 brook) into Digbeth right in the heart of the centre of Birmingham. At least ninety percent of this mostly suburban and urban walk takes place on towpaths or near river banks.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

We Built This City On Watermills

When we think of England’s major cities we think of the Aire in Leeds, the Don in Sheffield, the River Irwell separating Manchester from Salford, the Avon canalised using an ingenious series of barriers and pumps in Bristol, getting a ferry across the Mersey at Liverpool, countless films featuring the Tower or Waterloo Bridges in London, and of course Newcastle… is literally upon Tyne.

Even midlands cities such as Stoke and Nottingham (both on Trent) and Leicester which sprung up around the Soar, let alone somewhat smaller places like Derby with the Derwent, Northampton which has the Nene flowing through it, Worcester bisected by the Severn, or Hereford at a bend on the romantic Wye, have water integrally at their heart.

On paper then, Birmingham seems an outlier. It sits miles away from either the Severn or the Trent, the two mighty meandering rivers which give the local water company its name. Two rivers which between them drain almost the entire midlands region and a bit more besides. The closest thing to a substantial river flowing through the city is the Tame. The Tame is largely obscured for much of its progress through the city’s boundaries by a raised section of the M6 motorway. It also flows two to three miles north of the city centre, a distance which is actually a seriously long way from Birmingham’s historic boundaries, not having been incorporated into the city until practically the end of the 19th Century.

Despite this it is inarguable that Birmingham is as much built upon waterpower as any other city in the country. 

It would be easy to point to the canal network built from the 1770s onwards, to show how the city’s emergence as a vital centre for the metalworking, engineering and light manufacturing industries was predicated upon water. 

Canals and the predictability they granted to carrying large quantities of raw material and finished goods were critical to the early industrial revolution and the growth in production that this entailed.

However, there is a solid case to be made for the importance of water in the development of Birmingham even earlier. 

The first watermills appeared around Birmingham in the Middle Ages. Initially rivers like the Rea, Tame and the Cole, via the construction of waterwheels, were harnessed to provide motive power for grinding corn and other cereals. The natural weight of their flowing waters doing work that would otherwise have required teams of animals or scores of people to generate the same output.

By the 14th and 15th Centuries some mills in the areas which are now Birmingham were being set to grinding other materials, and powering some of the processes needed for metalworking. This rudimentary manufacturing power supply led lto little industrial workshops springing up along the rivers around the city, not least the Rea where it runs through Digbeth and Highgate, and as far south along its course as Stirchley, King’s Norton and Cotteridge.

Whilst it was still very much concentrated in the area that is now the Bullring, Digbeth, New Street and High Street, by the time of the Civil Wars in the mid-17th Century Birmingham was a bustling north Warwickshire manufacturing town. Whilst, the smaller settlements surrounding it, many of which are now suburbs, were also engaged in industrial work.

It was this initial basis which formed the foundations upon which the canal led growth of Birmingham in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries was built. Without it, and without the tradition of milling and using the waters of the city’s little rivers and brooks for small-scale manufacturing purposes, the Birmingham that we know may never have gotten off the ground.

The Walk

This walk shows that it is possible to walk from the very edge of Birmingham, right to Digbeth, the historic home of small scale manufacturing slap bang in the centre, pretty much entirely along waterways.

It takes in two canals, one river and one brook, with an excellent view of a second river towards the end…

At Whitlock’s End Station, more or less exactly the point where Worcestershire and West Midlands county meet, exit left into the station car park.

Once in the car park turn left and walk towards the main road.

At the main road turn left and walk across the railway bridge.

Just after the bridge you approach the edge of the village of Major’s Green.

On the edge of the built up area turn right.

Follow the road through a residential area, with houses from a mixture of eras from the 19th Century to the present, for some distance.

Eventually you reach another bridge. Walk across it.

On the far side there is an opening on your right.

Head through this opening and down a short flight of steps of the Stratford Canal.

Once beside the Stratford Canal, you are on the first waterway of your walk, turn right.

This leads you along the towpaths behind the houses of Major’s Green.

After a short distance you cross over a road next to the Drawbridge Inn. Where – appropriately enough – a drawbridge carries the road across the canal. 

Just on the other side of the road I spotted a heron poised to catch fish on the other side of the canal from the towpath.

The next small section takes you through what is about as close to a rural setting as you get on this walk, with the canal quite high up above the surrounding north Worcestershire landscape.

Soon though you are back in suburbia, in Solihull Lodge, a tiny spit of modern housing estate tract which sticks out of the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull and juts into south east Birmingham.

Many of the householders have gone to great, seriously creative lengths, to make terraces, patios and little garden rooms which get the most out of their little back gardens facing onto the canal.

Somewhere around here, amidst the greenery of outer suburbia you cross between Solihull and Birmingham.

You then enter a quiet, wooded section, where you follow the canal for a bit.

Presently you approach a concrete road bridge.

A short distance on the other side, where on the day I walked the route there were a couple of canal boats moored, just after a little canalside house, there is some woodland.

When you reach the woodland look out for a path, flanked by a wooden arch, leading into the trees down a short flight of shallow steps.

Follow the path as it slopes downhill through the trees.

Soon you approach another path running off to your right, in front of a stand of trees.

When you reach this path turn right. It leads out onto the side of Yardley Wood Road, near the edge of the suburb of Billesley.

On the far side of the road, which can be crossed by a handy set of traffic lights there is a path snaking across a patch of grass.

Head down this path. It runs alongside the second of the waterways that you are following into Birmingham, the Chinn Brook.

Chinn Brook is tiny compared to the other waterways and canals that you walk along on this route.

You follow this tree lined walkway, a kind of linear park, quite common along the watercourses of south Birmingham, for some distance. 

Presently you emerge onto Chinn Brook Recreation Ground, a long park-cum-playing fields sloping down from the inter-war council built semi detached houses of the Billesley estate.

Walk straight across the Recreation Ground, either via the paved path which runs at the bottom of it, or following the strip that has been cut in the grass by the Council to enable cyclists to quickly traverse the park.

After several minutes walking you come to a metal bridge across the Chinn Brook with a sturdy wooden signpost to its left.

At the bridge and signpost turn left and head towards Trittiford Road.

Once out of Billesley Recreation ground cross over the road via a drop curb next to a bus stop adjacent to where you leave the park.

Having headed across the road head through a gateway just behind, and to the right, of where you have crossed onto the path beyond.

Here you continue walking along the bank of the Chinn Brook.

This leads across another strip of grass bounded by trees and bushes.

Somewhere along the way the little Chinn Brook converges with a bigger river. You are now walking along the third waterway of the route: the River Cole.

On the other side of this small area of park land you come to a quiet road with a sheltered housing complex and some bungalows in rebrick.

Walk along this road – there’s a pavement on your left – for a short distance.

Soon you come to the top of this cul-de-sac.

Turn slightly to the left here and cross over the road via some crossing lights.

As you cross the road you see the end corner of something really rare. It is the side of a small strip of the prefabricated (prefab) houses, one of the very few small surviving estates of them in the UK. These factory built houses were produced as kits in the 1940s to house people who had been made homeless during the blitz. Most prefabs assembled in the UK were later demolished and replaced with standard housing. A few other examples live on in museums. However, this little road of houses in suburban south Birmingham lives on, with discussions underway to secure their future, and a fair number continue to be lived in. Worth stopping off for a look if you are at all interested.

Once you are on the same side of the road as the prefabs turn right.

Here there is a wooden arch, set in a wooden fence.

Walk through here and down the path. Here you are once again walking along the bank of the River Cole.

The path runs past grassland, trees and through some very pretty riverside woodland. People’s back gardens run down to the stream.

Much has been made in Birmingham’s placemaking, tourist marketing and general civic PR about the fact that the city has more miles of canals than Venice. It’s a brash and thought provoking statement. Great trivia for a pub quiz. But if Birmingham is somewhere where you live the whole time then it is far more interesting and pertinent to your life and your enjoyment of the city that twenty five percent of its area is greenspace. A figure significantly higher than most other cities in Europe, especially ones as big as Birmingham.

Leaving the riverside parkland to cross a road once more, you come face-to-face with something at least as rare as the prefabs. 

Which is to say a – hopefully soon to be fully – working watermill, one which is thought to have inspired J.R.R. Tolkien no less. 

Sarehole Mill today is cared for by Birmingham Museums Trust, who still demonstrate grain milling there (as well as running an outdoors pizza restaurant at lunchtimes). Sarehole Mill is a very rare example of a surviving watermill that is close to still functioning. It is also a prime example of the kinds of watermills which used to dot the rivers all around Birmingham, milling flour, milling metal, and operating early industrial machinery. Illustrating the versatile nature of water as a form of power, and the often “jobbing” nature of these early factories, between 1756 and 1761 the mill was leased by Matthew Boulton as a place for rolling sheet metal. 

Having crossed over the road you are well into Hall Green, the then largely rural area where J.R.R. Tolkien grew up. Reliable commentators on the author’s work consider Sarehole Mill a potential model for the watermill in the Shire in the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books.

Walk through the car park of Sarehole Mill.

On the other side of the car park you cross a metal bridge, over a channel carrying water to or from the mill race.

Here you enter a little park which runs alongside the River Cole near the point where Hall Green begins to blend into Moseley and Kings’ Heath.

At the end of the grassy park, fringed with fancy brick modernist 1960s flats with huge (pre oil crisis) windows, and large detached and semi-detached houses from an earlier era, you come upon something else quite special.

Right at the end of the park where it comes out onto a quiet road of large houses with an almost rural vibe. Here on your right is a ford across the River Cole, running right down the middle of the street. You seldom see anything like it in an urban area, let alone the second largest city in the country.

It is in keeping with this section of the walk’s fantastical air. Though undoubtedly the ford’s presence in suburbia is more Alan Garner than J.R.R. Tolkein, or perhaps, given that this is Birmingham and what used to be Worcestershire, Penda’s Fen.

Passing near the side of the ford you walk through a metal divide put up to stop vehicles going through onto the path beyond.

Once on the other side, follow the path along, as it hugs close to the River Cole. It is surrounded by woodlands and grass as you walk along. Again it does not feel like you are only a couple of miles from the heart of a city of 1.1 million people.

There are even some stepping stones in place for anyone wishing to cross from one bank of the Cole to the other.

You keep on the woodland path beside the River for some distance.

At this point you emerge out onto a green, on one side of which stands a spectacular brick church, evidently built at just the point when modernism was beginning to, but had not quite, displaced arts and crafts as the style du jour. Today it is home to the Mughal-e-Azam restaurant. 

Walking across the green you emerge onto the busy and buzzing Stratford Road.

Famously, as Sampad revealed through an excellent oral history project a few years ago, when a migrant community moves to Birmingham for work they settle at the top of the Stratford Road, and then as they establish themselves in the city they move down it. This makes the A34 – to give Stratford Road its offical designation – Birmingham’s highway of opportunity.

Upon leaving the green beside the church building which is now a restaurant, turn right slightly.     

Here there is a bridge, built by the County Borough of Birmingham in 1914 shortly after the area was incorporated into the city.

Near this point you can cross over the road, looking for the continuation of the path along the Cole on the other side. Take care when crossing the road as Stratford Road is a major thoroughfare to and from the city centre, so does get very busy.

If you look back at this point and are lucky, you might catch a glimpse of the tower of the immensely grand Moseley School, in the distance. 19th and early 20th Century Birmingham and its surrounds, architectural exuberance at its most out there.

Once on the other side of the Stratford Road head down the path into the J.R.R. Tolkien referencing Shire Country Park.

You follow the path for some distance through the trees, bushes and shrubbery near the River Cole, that are situated along the path.

At one point on your left there is an allotment, fringed by terraces of houses, visible over a fence.

Presently a gap in a terrace of houses looms in the distance beyond some trees.

Leaving the Shire Country Park – briefly – you come out onto a road of terraced houses.

Cross over this road and head back into the Country Park via a gap between two terraces, immediately opposite where you have come out.

You are now very much in the inner part of Birmingham.

Follow a lane behind the terraces for a short distance.

Soon you come to a point where the path forks.

Here you can either continue along the metalled path on your right (part of the National Cycle route system) or do what I did and turn left.

Soon the path runs alongside the River Cole once more.

This area has an unkempt, industrial and post-industrial feel. 

Apparently, on the side of the River where you walk there used to be a brickworks. There are next to no physical traces of this, besides the presence of ash trees and scrubby bushes of the kind which typically gather on any former industrial land left long enough.

To your left on the far side of the River Cole there are still plenty of workshops, factories and warehouses still in action.

After some distance the path suddenly sharply veers to your right.

Follow it up and walk towards some modern industrial units.

Once you reach this estate turn left, under a wooden arch.

Having passed under the arch walk along the road across the industrial estate.

At the far end of the industrial estate there is another unusual sight. A naval jet aircraft from the 1950s (I presume, based upon my limited knowledge of the aviation of jet war planes) fairly newly painted, and stuck on a pole.

Cross over what is a very busy road, opposite a BP garage.

Once on the other side of the road turn right. There is a side road running off the left, immediately after the end of the petrol station forecourt.

Walking alone the side road you pass a couple of garages and a workshop yard which has a vast collection of wooden pallets stacked up all around it.

At the far end next to a unit with a blue metal upper half, there is a path. Head down here.

The top of the Tysley Incinerator, where most of Birmingham’s non-recyclable rubbish is burnt, is just about visible in the distance. 

You are still walking near the River Cole at this point, which is incredibly verdant for an industrial area near the heart of the city.

Soon the path reaches a bridge on your left.

Use this bridge to walk across the River Cole.

On the other side follow the path as it runs up above the river bank.

Then keep following it as it curves around to the right.

On your right the path passes some pools thickly overhung with trees. Some kind of urban nature kind of initiative.

Passing the pools the path veers to the right.

Here you see in front of some strange megaliths in a clearing amidst the trees.

These are the climbing walls of the Ackers Trust, a large outdoor activity centre right in the middle of Birmingham.

The path runs along the side of the climbing area and past the area used for mock skiing and snowboarding. I recall coming here for snowboarding, at least twenty years ago, with a youth group I was part of. The place has barely changed.

There is a little Po-Mo ski chalet style centre office on your left, turn left here and follow the path down towards this building.

Just beyond the centre building lies a car park.

Once in the car park turn right and walk the length of the centre building.

On the other side of the Ackers Trust centre building there is a path.

Head off up this path. 

It leads steeply uphill into a stand of trees.

At the top of the hill, inside the trees walk a short distance.

Till soon on your left there is a bridge.

This leads across the Grand Union Canal running to and from the centre of Birmingham.

Crossing over the bridge, you get an excellent view looking east of the Tysley Incinerator.

For two years I got the train this way almost everyday, along the nearby Chiltern Mainline, to Solihull Sixth Form College. But never got off to explore this part of the city.

On the far side of the bridge across the Grand Union Canal there is a set of steps on your right.

Head down these steps.

At the bottom there is the towpath. 

Once on the towpath turn right.

The towpath now leads more or less straight all the way for a couple of miles into the heart of Birmingham and to Digbeth.

You are now onto your fourth and final waterway: the Grand Union Canal.

Initially the walk is quite green and leafy in terms of its feel, not unlike the earlier sections of the walk from Whitlock’s End to this point near Tyseley.

Soon however, it takes a turn for the more industrial. You approach Sparkbrook, with Small Heath also only a stone’s throw away on the other side of the railway tracks that run just to your right.

The canal is now fringed by industrial buildings, many still in use, others lying empty. There’s also a very tall old pub – not a pub anymore – over on the left in Sparkbrook.

Descending into Birmingham there are great views of the warehouses and workshops along the route. You pass a timber yard and some factory buildings hard at work.

Here you are very much walking along the southern fringe of Small Heath. Peaky Blinders fans, alongside waterways lovers and industrial heritage aficionados alike, will appreciate the old canal wharf, still intact with little awnings for the barges sticking out over the canal, as if the transport of goods by water only stopped yesterday.  

Further on, underneath a sturdy brick bridge, you come to a flight of locks.

Before passing under a mighty girder bridge, carrying the railway south east, down to Solihull, Leamington Spa, Oxford, London and the south coast. 

This leads round to a large pool where the barges – once – would presumably have waited and organised themselves.

Looking back you can see the top of the spectacularly grand church set-up by Anglican Christians in around 1900 to try and reach the people of inner-city Birmingham. Yet another example of Birmingham’s exuberant late Victorian and early 20th Century architecture. It looks like the kind of thing Charles I would have erected as a summer palace for watching plays, prior him deciding to wage war on his own people and Parliament cutting off his head.

Passing under a low road bridge there is a wonderful mosaic piece of public art depicting a narrowboat.

After the bridges you can tell that you are nearing Birmingham city centre. An 18th Century looking building stands amidst the warehouses.

A little further on, under another low bridge, you cross a steep humpbacked bridge over a redundant, but still existent branch canal.

You are now approaching the creative-cum-industrial-cum-property speculator’s delight, that is Digbeth.

The old industrial buildings brood gothically, and the street art, as exuberant as any Birmingham building project from circa 1900, brightens up many of the surfaces.

You pass a few more Peaky Blinder’esque wharfs.

Then on your right, snaking beneath you through its brick culvert is the River Rea. Another key waterway that gave life to Birmingham’s industries. This walk does not go along it, but catching sight of it as it flows up to eventually join the mighty River Trent and flow out to the North Sea, is a nice bonus.

Just after the Rea on your left hand side in Minerva works. Home to many of Birmingham’s creative spaces such as the East/Central European focused Centrala art gallery, events space, cafe. As well as media art space VIVID Projects, contemporary gallery and studio space Grand Union and studio, project and exhibition space Stryx.

Just after Minvera works on your left, stands a squat brick building, about three storeys high with what looks like a terrace of houses in front of it. It is almost directly inline with Birmingham’s iconic Rotunda, a cylindrical tower block which is more or less the sole surviving part of the 1960s incarnation of the Bullring shopping centre development.

The building before you is the Junction Works which was being used as offices by one of the Grand Union Canal Company’s predecessors at the dawn of the 19th Century. It is arguably the oldest office building (built as offices at least) in the city, if not West Midlands County full-stop. When I walked the route in spring 2022 it was in the process of being renovated into and art gallery, studio space and office space once more, by Grand Union (due to be completed in 2023).

Soon you pass first under a road bridge, then under a footbridge bridge.

On the far side turn hard to the left.

Then cross over a humpbacked bridge you have just walked over.

From the top of the bridge there is a superb view of the southeastern part of Bimingham city centre.

On the other side you are nearly at the end of your walk.

Follow the towpath a little further past a tiny community garden on your left.

Also on your left is a short quite steep ramp.

Turn left and walk up these steps.

At the top you are standing near the upper end of Digbeth where it turns into Birmingham city centre proper. This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

From where the walk ends there are a myriad of public transport options. The Cross City Line runs metres away from where you finish. Buses to east and south east Birmingham run along many of the roads nearby if you head south towards Deritend High Street and Cheapside. Moor Street, which offers trains heading back towards Whitlock’s End, as well as towards Solihull and up towards the Black Country is five minutes walk away. Buses from the city centre and New Street Railway Station are little more than ten minutes away, as are many of the city centre sights and attractions.