Distance: just over 2 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: easy

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

Walk through green spaces in the Black Country metropolitan boroughs of Sandwell and Dudley to the Saltwells National Nature Reserve, a rich woodland environment shaped by a unique geology and centuries of extrative industry.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

The Black Country’s National Nature Reserve

Dudley and the areas surrounding it are supremely rich in mineral wealth.

Chief amongst these are coal, but clay for bricks, limestone, iron ore bearing stone and much more, have also formed part of its exciting commercial mix.

In Roman times it is reckoned that the unusually rich 10 metre seam of coal incredibly close to the surface, just north of Brierley Hill, was mined.

There is no doubt that in medieval times this seam was exploited. To this day the landscape of the Saltwells National Nature Reserve is littered with the bell pits that opportunistic medieval and early modern miners sank 

The industrial revolution led to even more intense exploitation of the resources available in the Saltwells area.

Coal was dug, clay was dug, iron was extracted, so was salt. Famously though, as the pits for mining and quarrying moved on so the area left behind became surprising wild once more.

It was these tendencies which led to the area, despite a degree of ongoing coal mining, to be declared a local nature reserve in the 1970s.

Then in 1981 the National Coal Board suggested tearing up almost the entire area for an open cast coal mine. Local residents hotly protested. The National Coal Board backed down.

More recently Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, with the support of Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council and the EU have reclaimed Saltwells as a wild and beautiful woodland for the borough’s residents. An area which also celebrates the site’s over one thousand years of industrial heritage.

The Walk

et the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file 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.

From Cradley Heath Interchange, whether you have arrived by bus or train turn left.

Keep heading down the road you are heading left along for some distance.

Presently you see a sign for a nature reserve.

Turn right here.

Keep on to the left, then head rightwards through this nature reserve initially.

You’ll see see a very modern intervention where the river is carried underneath a seriously hench concrete bridge.

Then head slightly to the right.

At the top of a slight hill adjacent to a set of 1970s or 1980s vintage flats turn left.

Then after a very short distance turn left again.

Follow the path downhill for some distance, over a stream, and past a pipeline.

Once on the other side turn right.

Follow the rightwards path for some distance.

Presently you come to a field.

Here turn right again and follow the well traced path.

Follow this will traced path into woodland.

Presently you reach a junction.

To your right there is a wooden crossing bridge.

Turn right here and cross the bridge.

At the junction on the other side turn left and head slightly uphill.

Presently you approach a very pleasant looking cluster of 19th Century houses.

Just prior to reaching them there is a footpath off to the side.

Turn left here.

Then left again shortly after, having reached the lane leading between the houses.

At a twist in the lane turn right.

Then head onto land passing the rear of some houses with a very pleasant brook to your left.

Presently you reach a main road.

Turn right here for a short distance.

Then when to the left there is a road heading north, cross over.

Follow this road north into the new housing estate a short distance until you reach the path heading right.

Take the footpath heading right.

Follow it some distance.

Then head left, eventually reaching a gate before crossing a car park past the provisional Saltwells visitor centre.

Just beyond another gate, you start following the bed of a former railway which ran up to the old Round Oaks Steelworks. Here you encounter the first of a number of sculptures in the area.

Presently there is a fork in the path. Take the right hand turning here.

Then walk for some distance, gently uphill.

Presently you come to a junction marked up a sculpture on your left.

Choose to turn left here.

Then keep on to the left for some distance.

Presently you reach a four way junction. Turn left here as well.

Continue for some further distance to another junction. Here turn right.

After a short distance this path leaves the trees and becomes partially metalled.

Soon you reach a gateway with a road beyond.

Once on the road opposite some flats turn right.

Keep walking towards a set of traffic lights. Presently the vast Merry Hill shopping centre appears on your left.

At the traffic lights turn left to access Merry Hill. This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

Merry Hill is served by a bus station with buses running along several routes in Birmingham and to other parts of the Black Country. At the time of writing (May 2022) the X10 bus served central Birmingham, Halesowen and also stopped at Cradley Heath Interchange where this walk begins.