Distance: 8 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: medium

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps

Varied urban, suburban and rural walk from central Stoke-on-Trent along the Caldon Canal to the Head of Trent Valley, then up to Knypersley Reservoir a large and very beautiful canal feeder reservoir and the only dam along the 185 mile length of the River Trent.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

Daming the Head of Trent

Running from Etruria in the heart of the Stoke-on-Trent conurbation to Froghall on the fringes of the Staffordshire Peak District, the Caldon Canal is one of the UK’s oldest completely artificial inland waterways.

It opened in 1779 to transport the White Peak’s limestone, and coal from the little Cheadle coalfield, down to the potteries, Birmingham and the Black Country.

Like many early canals, it weaves and darts, utilising the contour lines to avoid extensive earthworks and other feats of engineering, to ensure that the barges had a nice, level, cut to navigate.

The Caldon Canal was evidently a success, at least before railways began nipping at the canal networks heels in the middle years of the 19th Century.

A testimony to the Caldon Canal’s success is the decision taken in the 1820s to shore up its water supply by constructing the mighty, yet incredibly beautiful Knypersley Reservoir.

The River Trent, Britain’s third longest river, germinates in a shallow valley with a mixed rural and suburban character just north of Stoke-on-Trent called the Head of Trent.

It was decided by the Caldon Canal’s owners to place the dam near the top of this valley, just south of the little town of Knypersley, which today forms part of a mini conurbation with Biddulph.

For the time the resulting Knypersley Reservoir was a major engineering feat. It has a total surface area of 35 acres, a maximum depth of over 12 metres and a total capacity of just under a million square metres of water.

To this day it continues to supply water to the Caldon Canal, which runs a couple of miles to its south. An attractive footpath runs from the canal, following the water carrying culvert all the way to the mighty earth dam stopping up the nascent River Trent.

Planted with trees and situated amidst hilly country, the Knypersley Reservoir is a pleasant spot, very popular with day trippers from the nearby Stoke conurbation and beyond. Needless to say the creation of the Reservoir through daming the upper reaches of the Trent and creating parkland (a sop to the local aristocratic landowner) must have had a substantial impact on the local ecology.

Today there are efforts ongoing to “rewild” sections of the Head of Trent Valley, returning farmland to marshy, mossy, wetland. However, farming aside human’s major impact upon the valley system began with the Caldon Canal and its rapacious need for water’s creation of the Knypersley Reservoir.

The Walk

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps

I use the Ordnance Survey app to plan walks. Get your copy today.

This walk to the source of the River Trent starts from Stoke-on-Trent Station starts from the exit next to Platform One, opposite the North Stafford Hotel and Federation House.

Turn left on leaving the Station building and walk a short way down Station Road towards a roundabout and the junction with College Road. Here you’ll find the compact, modern and bustling (in term time at least) Stoke-on-Trent campus of Staffordshire University.

Head right onto College Road which splits the campus in half and keep on walking up it once you pass the university buildings.

At this point you’ll enter an interesting cosmopolitan area comprising shops aimed at both students and the area’s large South Asian community. It consists of tightly packed late 19th Century vintage terraced houses, very possibly built for employees of the railway company.

After 5-10 minutes walking you reach the top of College Road, by a small roundabout, and see Hanley Park opposite you.

Cross over the road and turn through the set of ornate gates on your right.

Having passed through the gates enter the park and then turn left going past an ornamental lake.

Presently you’ll see another smaller path splitting off from the main path to your left. This path heads up a short steep bank in the direction of a grand pavilion type structure.

Head up this bank and you’ll find yourself on the towpath of the Caldon Canal.

Having reached the canal turn right and begin walking down the towpath.

All in all, the next stretch of the walk which is just over three miles, takes place entirely on the towpath.

The Caldon Canal opened in 1779, making it one of the older parts of the UK’s canal network. For a walker, boater, or other user of the route, whether on land or water, this means that it’s rather twistier than later waterways which made greater use of engineering techniques and technologies to ensure a straighter line.

Having left Hanley Park this section of the walk starts off quite urban, walking past current and former factory sites, new canalside housing estates and in the shadow of a cluster of prominent local authority high-rise black grouped dramatically on top of a steep ridge.

Pottery making, the most significant of the city’s traditional industry, retains a presence. Relatively early on in the walk you pass the Emma Bridgewater Pottery Factory whose production plant and studios sit in an old building by the canal.

As well as a twisty narrow route the canal also has some impressively low bridges. When it came to this one, I – far from the tallest man in the world – had to slightly stoop to pass under it.

Just after the bridge I came across two fine little examples of the region’s traditional pot bank kilns, marooned in the middle of a new-ish, pleasant-ish, development of canal side flats shaped vaguely like warehouses.

Not unlike the Black Country at the other end of Staffordshire, Stoke retains a fair few factories in comparison to much of the UK.

However, having passed by an industrial estate accessed via a lifting canal bridge, which is home to a little plant that makes use of a lot of gas cylinders, the route’s character becomes first suburban.

Then quite rapidly almost rural as the canal follows a course right on the edge of the city’s main built up area.

After several miles walking along the canal you you reach the edge of the little town of Milton, which feels quite distinct from other parts of the Stoke conurbation. It is in Milton where you can turn off the canal and walk to Chatterley Whitfield, a fascinating modern ruin of a vast former colliery, largely untouched since it shut in the late 1970s.

After passing through the centre of Milton the towpath initially feels quite like other sections of the Caldon Canal.

Suddenly, however, you emerge into an open section right on the edge of the urban area.

Continue on a short distance passing a solitary lock and then a drawbridge.

Rounding a bend you approach the point where you leave the canal.

Upon coming to a bridge next to a large red brick farmhouse off to your left, turn off the towpath and head up onto the bridge.

Crossing the bridge, keep on the left down the track around the side of the large red brick house.

Soon you come to a gate on the right leading into a yard with sheds in it.

Head through this gate and cross the yard keeping to the left.

This leads out onto a lane.

Here on the left there is a path fenced off to the left of the track leading up to the yard you have just crossed.

Turn left and walk along this path approaching a village in the distance.

Much of the remainder of the way to the source of the River Trent is along paths waymarked with the sign of the Staffordshire Moorlands Walks. Though the frequency of the waymarking is a little bit inconsistent.

Presently you reach the edge of the village of Norton Green. The village has a distinctly not urban, or even suburban feel, and its boundary marks the divide between the Stoke-on-Trent council area and the area of Staffordshire administered by Staffordshire County Council.

Upon reaching a lane running along the southern edge of the village crossover.

Walk down a path along the edge of a park-cum-village green for a short distance.

This leads out to another road.

Cross over this road as well.

On the other side slightly to the right is a path which leads down the side of an estate of 1960s or 1970s vintage houses (apparently built on the Radburn Principle).

At the bottom of the path leading past the front doors of the houses you reach the furthest edge of the Stoke conurbation.

Here there is a metal gate leading out into fields.

Head through the gate, then turn left through another gate, and across a bridge.

Once across the bridge turn right and walk across the field in front of you.

Somewhere off to your left as you walk up the field lies a small stream, which is the nascent River Trent.

The rather straight culvert to the left is also arguably part of the Trent, drawing its waters from the marshy land and hills around you. It is however, a canal feeder conveying water from Knypersley Reservoir (the only reservoir on the River Trent), and you follow it all of the way to the Reservoir approximately three miles to the north of Norton Green.

Presently you come to another gate, leading into a different field.

Walk across the field, it is quite long, albeit lumpy; in shape.

At the top of the field there are the remains of two gates. One a very old farm gate with weather stone posts, the other a newer metal gate.

Here head to the right slightly, crossing over a farm track.

In the process you switch sides of the hedgerow, studded with trees that you have been following.

Keep on walking across the field that you are now in, keeping close to the line of the hedgerow that you have just crossed.

After some distance you come to a gap in the hedge with the remains of a stile in it. Use this to get into the next field.

On the far side head to the left following the line of a small copse.

This leads to another stile.

Follow the path down through the undergrowth.

Soon you emerge into another small field.

Here follow the path across the undulating ground off slightly to the left.

This leads to a gap down onto a quiet country lane.

Once on the lane turn right and walk uphill a short distance.

Soon on your left you come to a tractor width gap into a field, with a waymarking sign pointing into it next to a redundant stile.

Walking into the field head off slightly to the left making for the line of a hedgerow in the centre of the field.

Upon reaching this scrap of hedgerow walk to the far side of it.

Here turn right and begin following it, across the field and through some trees.

As you cross the field you soon realise that the ground beneath your feet is marshy. The water-sodden nature of the land around here is one of the factors which gives the valley you are walking through and the surrounding dells the name “Head of Trent”.

Generally the path through this section is quite easy to follow.

The fields tend to be quite narrow, with frequent stiles and occasional gates providing access through them.

Here and there the grassland and turf is broken up by sense scraps of copse.

Apparently this section of the walk is subject to a nature reclamation scheme. It is clearly having some effect with regards to restoring the wetland like nature of the landscape, as the ground was incredibly water sodden

Just follow the path as it weaves across this landscape.

Presently you come to a sturdy wooden stile.

This leads onto a metal bridge across a tributary stream.

Follow the well defined path on the other side, which runs along a little promontory overhung with trees next to the canal feeder culvert.

At the end of the promontory follow the path as it curves gently to the right.

Ahead of you – presently – there is a metal gate leading out onto a lane.

Head through the stile next to the gate and step out onto the lane.

On the other side of the lane head across a stile to access a woodland path.

Follow the path along the edge of the woodland for some distance.

Eventually you come to a stile which you cross.

Once across the stile keep on walking straight following the outline of the path along the side of some woodland.

Heading for a thicket you pass another – now redundant stile – heading out into a further field.

Carrying on across the field beyond, past a tree, to cross another stile.

Then continuing on across the next field, making for a line of trees in the distance.

Here you come to a wooden bridge across a ditch, which you walk across.

Once on the other side of the bridge follow the path along the bottom of a shallow valley.

The path broadly tracks the line of the canal feeder culvert off to your right.

Presently, following the line of the canal feeder, the path heads off to the right.

Here ahead of you, you see the dam holding back the waters of the Knypersley Reservoir, an impressive piece of early 19th Century engineering, rising above you.

Cross over it, and then turn left, walking through a small field.

On the far side there is a stile leading up through trees to a short slight of steps.

At the top of the steps walk a short distance along a path heading for the wall of the dam. There is a pool of water collecting for the canal feeder off to your left.

Use a fairly steep set of stone steps to climb the wall of the dam up onto a road which runs along the top.

Once on the road you cannot miss the beautiful and surprisingly large Knypersley Reservoir in front of you. This body of water feeds the Caldon Canal which you walked along earlier in the walk. It is the only place along its course where the River Trent is dammed. An act which doubtless had a tremendous impact on the local ecology when it was undertaken in the early 19th Century.

Upon reaching the road at the top of the dam turn right and walk a short way to the end of the earthwork. Take care as the traffic across the dam is surprisingly frequent and travels quite quickly.

At the side of the dam on your left, there is a gate which gives you access to the path around the reservoir.

Because it is landscaped in a parkland fashion the lakeside is a popular place for people from Stoke, and elsewhere in northern Staffordshire to visit for a day out.

With a total surface area of 35 acres, a maximum depth of over 12 metres and a total capacity of just under a million square metres of water, it is an impressive undertaking.

Once on the reservoir path follow it around the edge of the shoreline for some distance.

Presently you cross over an ornate red brick bridge before plunging into woodland. This is your cue that it is almost time to leave the lakeside path.

Soon on your right you see the brooding, rundown and ramshackle Warder’s Tower rising above you amidst the trees. It was constructed in 1828 as a romantic gothic folly and a gamekeepers lodge, for the landowner who owned the hills around the new reservoir.

This is where the walk ends, although you do have the option of continuing the circuit of the Reservoir should you wish.

Getting Back

On weekdays (at the time of writing in June 2022) there is a very frequent bus service every day of the week along the A527 with buses 7A or 9 running into Hanley in Stoke-on-Trent. To reach the A527 you can walk along the road running across the Reservoir dam to the south. This will take no longer than half an hour. There are also footpaths running due west of the Reservoir, and north west to the little town of Knypersley itself.