Distance: just under 12 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: medium

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps

Walk from central Leamington Spa along the towpath of the Grand Union Canal through the countryside of eastern central Warwickshire to the village of Napton-on-the-Hill famous for its prominant windmill.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

Grand Union Junction

Perhaps because in contrast to other parts of the country, such as the South West, so much of the Midlands canal infrastructure has survived, the industrial waterways of the 18th and 19th and Centuries have become a key component of the region’s identity.

This makes the Midland’s many canalside villages which grew up around the waterways such as Stourport-on-Severn, Shardlow and Braunston, some of the region’s most celebrated and distinctive small towns and large villages. 

Their status as popular places to live and to visit is no doubt aided by the tendency midlanders have to make anywhere with water into the seaside, however, their charm and historical importance as – now sleepy – cradles of modernity is readily apparent.

Warwickshire is one the midlands foremost waterways counties. Its northern half – draining into the Trent – was at the forefront of the industrial revolution with Birmingham and Coventry emerging as the region’s two largest discrete cities (in Birmingham’s case becoming three times larger than its nearest rival, Coventry) and it’s far north becoming coal mining country. 

Southern Warwickshire, firmly in the River Severn basin, home to genteel towns like Kenilworth, Leamington Spa, Warwick and Stratford-upon-Avon as well the northern reaches of the Cotswolds, is often thought to have remained bucolic – at least until the construction of the M40 and the upgrading of the Chiltern Mainline.

As is so often the case this impression is not quite right. Whilst some parts of central and southern Warwickshire, were until recent, or remain, sparsely populated and quite isolated, other sections became major staging posts for waterways and railways. Rugby would be an example of the latter, whilst the River Avon was canalised as far Stratford-upon-Avon from the Severn by 1638. The Oxford Canal was cut in the 1770s, near the start of the late 18th Century canal boom, with the Stratford-upon-Avon and what became the Grand Union in the interwar period, also being built in the following decades.

One of the nicest sections of the Grand Union Canal runs out from Leamington Spa to Napton-on-the-Hill not far from Northamptonshire border. Napton-on-the-Hill is where the West Midlands branch of the Grand Union Canal merges with the Oxford Canal, the two becoming one for a short section until the Grand Union begins wending its way south towards London once more at Braunston.

Napton-on-the-Hill is notable for being a bit of boaters paradise with numerous marinas where the two major waterways meet. The village is also notable for its historic windmill, a structure still quite commonly glimpsed in eastern Warwickshire and western Northamptonshire, perched on the hill. A sight much loved by those boating on, or walking along the route of the Oxford Canal.   

The Walk

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps

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 the forecourt at the front of Leamington Spa’s art deco railway station, where this walk begins, heading right as if you were leaving the station.

This leads you along a busy road running up from the town centre.

Soon you come to a set of traffic lights which you cross.

On the far side keep walking up the road heading to the right.

Presently on your left there is a flight of steps heading down to the Grand Union Canal.

Head down these steps on the left and onto the towpath.

Unusually for a British inland canal the Grand Union was extensively modernised in the 1930s so as to better enable canal freight to compete with rail and road transport. All in all, the modernisation scheme was not a great success. Despite significant investment into widening the canal for larger boats, straightening it to enable faster journey times and enhancing infrastructure such as locks, freight traffic continued to fall vertiginously and had essentially ceased by the start of the 1970s. The end of this era is depicted in the (fairly dreadful but fascinating) 1964 film The Bargee, which centres around a commercial barge on the Grand Union Canal.

The afterlife of this attempt to bring the canal into the 20th Century, does manifest itself however, in the fact that the Grand Union is far more like a water based motorway than the sleepier, more meandering narrow canals that make up the bulk of the navigable inland waterways in the UK.

A side effect of this is that it can be a tad monotonous, but it makes up for this in terms of speed.

This said pleasingly, the section leading to the junction with the Oxford Canal at Napton-on-the-Hill is one of the nicest. A real slice of pleasantly wooded, gently hilly, central Warwickshire countryside.

The first stages of the walk lead along the canal towpath through central Leamington.

Before heading out into the suburbs.

Soon you leave the town behind and enter the open countryside.

After some distance you pass your first lock, unusually wide so as to fit the broad beamed boats that can traverse the Grand Union Canal through it. Indeed, many of the craft you see moored along the Grand Union’s bank – home to many continuous cruisers – are significantly wider and larger than the typical narrowboat.

Soon you pass the turnoff onto a cycle track for the little village of Offenchurch, before entering a more open countryside.

Keep on walking for several more miles, passing several locks.

At the time of writing in July 2022 there is an impressive conveyor belt system across the canal carrying spoil away from a 1.6km long tunnel being dug under a Site of Scientific Interest as part of the HS2 projects. The vast earthworks for the new railway stretch in either direction on both sides of the canal, ahead of its completion at some point in the future (probably not 2026 as initially intended…).

After the HS2 works you plunge back into quintessential south midlands countryside.

Some distance after the HS2 works you approach the large village of Long Itchington.

Long Itchington is mostly set away from the canal, however, you pass by a couple of very pleasant looking canalside pubs on its eastern fringe.

Just after Long Itchington you come to a flight of locks carrying the canal uphill.

After the locks, now over 8 miles into the walk you are heading down a curve approaching Napton-on-the-Hill and the junction with the Oxford Canal.

You pass the impressive bridge abutments of a long dismantled railway, of which there are many in the area. This one, unlike others however, has not become a cycle track.

Having passed the bridge abutments you come to a series of marina pools, crossing wooden bridges over the access points for the marinas.

Not unlike Braunston, just over the county line in Northamptonshire, this area is canal boat central. There are hundreds of boats in marinas and moored along the banks.

Passing the Calcutt Locks you enter a straight section leading to the junction between the Grand Union and the Oxford Canal.

Heading underneath a bridge you reach the junction where the Grand Union Canal joins the Oxford Canal.

Here turn left and head up onto the bridge.

Then head left across the bridge before heading down onto the towpath of the Oxford Canal.

Walk a short way along the Oxford Canal.

It is picturesque, but the quality of the towpath is significantly worse than on the Grand Union Canal.

Soon you approach a bridge.

Just before you reach it on the right there is a turn off.

Head up this turn off, then head left up onto a road.

Taking care to avoid any oncoming traffic coming across the steep canal bridge, off to the left (the practice appears to be for drivers to honk their horn approaching it, to warn those on the other side but not all do).

On the far side of the bridge continue walking up the road.

Presently you reach a crossroads, with a filling station on the left and The Kings Head pub. Which has a nice cartoon of Charles I pre-execution.

From here you can continue uphill into the centre of Napton-on-the-Hill, including the site of the famous windmill, or alternatively this is also where you can catch a bus back to Leamington Spa.

Getting Back

Napton-on-the-Hill is served by several buses a day. At the time of writing in July 2022 there was a bus to Leamington Spa at 15:18 from a stop on the road uphill to the village centre near The Kings Head pub, and a final bus at 16:48 to Leamington Spa from the same stop. Once back at Leamington Spa there are numerous public transport options including trains towards London, Oxford and places on the south coast like Bournemouth, as well as up to Solihull, Birmingham and Coventry. There are also local buses to many destinations in and around Leamington Spa and central Warwickshire.