Distance: just over 6 miles

Difficulty of the Terrain: medium

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps

A walk up and over Turner’s Hill in the Rowley Hills, the highest point in West Midlands county.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

Getting back via Netherton High Street

Getting Back via the Netherton Tunnel

West Midlands “County Top“

Have you ever wondered what the tallest hill in the West Midlands is?

The answer is Turner’s Hill which towers above Rowley Regis, Cradley Heath and Oldbury in Sandwell.

In common with much of the central and western Midlands West Midlands county has a landscape of low, rolling hills. Some of those hills are quite steep, whilst most offer a fairly gentle climb. Few of them are much over 150 metres tall, so at 271 metres in height Turner’s Hill stands out.

It sits prominently at the end of the Rowley Hills, a ridge which runs from near Dudley town centre all the way to Rowley Regis. They are formed from a variety of vulcanised limestone called dolerite. A rock much in demand in Victorian times for road surfacing and the gravel between railway sleepers, which continues to be quarried from Turner’s Hill in small quantities to this day.

Of great significance is the fact that the Rowley Hills form part of the watershed between the Trent and the Severn. On the gentler eastern facing side of the hills raindrops that fall flow out along the River Tame towards the Trent and eventually the North Sea. Whilst on the steeper western side they enter the Stour, reaching the Severn at Stourport and the sea via the Bristol Channel.

In true Black Country fashion the hill has been well worked over the centuries. Quarried for rocks then used as landfill. The Netherton Tunnel, amongst the UK’s longest canal tunnels, runs for a couple of miles just north of Turner’s Hill underneath the Rowley Hills. Providing a shortcut on what was previously a bottleneck loop around the centre of Dudley.

It is also striking upon visiting that in contrast with other county tops around the Midlands that the built up area of the West Midlands conurbation extends almost to the summit. Indeed there is a golf course little more than 100 metres from the hill’s highest point.

Arguably the encroachment of industry, ribbon development, leisure schemes and major roads upon the county’s tallest point, nearly 300 metres above sea level is amongst the most quintessentially West Midlands things to have happened.

And it in no way detracts from the brilliant views near the top. On a clear day – apparently you can see as far as the Malverns to the south west and the Clee Hills to the north. Looking west into the mystical looking hilly county on the western fringes of the Black Country, out into Worcestershire and Shropshire on the way into Wales.

To the east you can see for miles across the plateau of rolling hills upon which Birmingham and the bulk of the Black Country are built. Surveying this landscape for the hills brought to my mind the altogether wilder environment of Ilkley Moor and how from its summit the tower blocks of central Leeds are clearly visible, close but a world away. Birmingham city centre takes on a similar dimension from the top of Turner’s Hill.

The Walk

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps

Route created with the Ordnance Survey App. Get your copy:

Exiting Sandwell and Dudley Station from the northbound platform which is served by trains to Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury, mid-Wales and the North West, turn right.

Then upon meeting the main road turn left and begin walking in the direction of Oldbury town centre.

Already right on the horizon you can glimpse Turner’s Hill with its distinctive radio masts. It is the tallest of the Rowley Hills, the highest peak in West Midlands county. Climbing up and over it is the objective of the walk.

After several minutes walking along the road towards the heart of Oldbury you come to a t-junction.

Here take the left hand fork.

After a short distance you reach Oldbury town centre.

Keep walking straight ahead, passing a row of mostly Victorian buildings on your left and the sprawling mid-1980s vintage offices of Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council on your right.

Sandwell chose central Oldbury as the home for its then relatively new council in the 1980s in large part because it was being regenerated at the time. But Oldbury is also pretty close to being the geographical centre of the Borough, whilst also being distinct from nearby West Bromwich, which as by far the biggest town in the district would probably have been perceived as a hostile takeover by the council area’s smaller constituent settlements.

Keep on walking past the early 1980s former SavaCentre, an early importation of the hypermarket concept into the UK, and the funky blue plastic, late New Labour vintage Jack Judge House which houses the town’s library.

Soon you are out amongst 1970s era single storey council housing and a modern retail park home to a McDonald’s and Sainsbury’s branded filling station.

Here you take a brief left turn and use a set of traffic lights to cross the dual carriageway ringing the town centre.

On the other side head to the right for a short distance.

Then reaching a second dual carriageway turn left once more, approaching a set of traffic lights.

Use these traffic lights to cross the road.

Once on the far side of the dual carriageway turn left again and keep walking past more retail sheds and warehouses.

Presently on your right next to a Kwik Fit garage there is a road stemming off from the dual carriageway.

Turn right and begin walking along the road.

This leads through an industrial estate with Turner’s Hill clearly visible ahead of you in the distance.

Walk along the road for a fair distance. Ahead of you beyond a tall pylon a lone tower block is visible. This is one of the area’s few surviving tower blocks from when it was comprehensively redeveloped in the 1960s. To this day Sandwell retains an unusually large number of properties in council ownership. The block stands near the Lion Farm Estate, documented with great power and emotional warmth by the photographer Rob Clayton as part of two projects, first in the early 1990s, and again in the late 2010s.

Presently you reach the edge of the Wolverhampton Road which slices through the central part of the Black Country.

Take a slight right turn to head up onto the side of the road via a flight of concrete steps.

At the top turn left a short way to reach some traffic lights.

On the far side turn right again and walk in the direction of a filling station, and a distant roadside branch of Premier Inn and a KFC drive thru.

Just past the filling station and before you reach the Premier Inn and KFC, there is a green footpath sign pointing up onto what looks like wasteland.

The track has the feel of crossing a former industrial site, or the home of a now extinct extractive industry. Historically weirdly fragmented between Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire and more bizarrely until the 19th Century Shropshire, western West Midland county’s unusual jurisdictional history benefited the growth of extractive industry and metal working. Something that was aided and abetted by the richness of the Black Country’s geology and abundance of resources like readily accessible coal. The Rowley Hills are formed from an unusual, blackened stone called Rowley Rag. Quarried extensively as a road building material in the 19th and 20th Centuries it consists of limestone, melted and reformed by prehistoric volcanoes.

Presently the path levels out, with the tower block visible off to the left and Turner’s Hill visible more or less straight ahead.

At this point follow the path to the left as it straightens out.

After some distance walking along a kind of embankment surrounded by scrubby trees turn right and head down a short slope.

On the other side of the dip there is a track off to the right heading uphill.

Turn right and follow it. Presently you come to a steep section where there are wheel ruts as if made by quad bikes, leading uphill.

Walk uphill along a path lined with scrub until you enter a patch ringed with bushes.

Presently you reach a junction, here keep on the wider path heading off to the left.

Keep on walking along the path for some distance heading uphill.

Behind you, now that you are quite high up, you can see the sole surviving tower of the Lion Farm Estate. Immortalised in Rob Clayton’s path breaking and deeply evocative Estate and Estate Return documentary photography projects in the early 1990s and late 2010s. Further out the Black Country and Birmingham sprawl to the north and the east.

Continue walking uphill across an expanse of heath land picking your way around old quarry workings.

After some distance you come to a junction where two paths meet. Continue walking straight ahead at this junction.

Now the radio masts on top of Turner’s Hill are right in front of you. Keep on walking steadily uphill towards them.

If you pause and look behind you the view across West Midlands county is even more impressive.

Presently you come to a tangle of trees running across the hillside.

Enter this little copse and follow the path as it runs straight ahead, crossing another path in the process.

Keep walking straight ahead until you come to a waymarking post.

Here take the arm of the path running to the left. This leads to a well worn path running across the heath land in the direction of the radio transmitters at the top of Turner’s Hill.

After some distance you come to the edge of the heathland beside a road.

The road is quite busy so take care when you cross.

On the far side there is a narrow but well worn path running into a stand of trees and then into tall grassland.

Having walked a short distance through the grasses you come out into a meadow.

The summit of Turner’s Hill is fenced off and inaccessible, unfortunately. However, once in the meadow you are more or less level with it.

To begin your descent down the western side of Turner’s Hill follow the path along the left hand side of the meadow.

This leads you to the western edge of the meadow.

Here there is a footpath running through grasses and bushes a short distance out onto a paved track.

Once on the paved track straight ahead of you, there is a footpath leading onto a golf course.

Head onto the golf course.

Taking care to avoid anyone teeing off, head left down the path that you find yourself on.

This leads steadily downhill across the course.

After some way it veers off to the right.

Then you take the next left to continue your progress downhill.

Presently you reach the end of the path.

Here, mindful that you are on a golf course, take care to hug close to the line of bushes next to the edge of the playing green.

It is worth taking in the view from this vantage point high up Turner’s Hill as well. From where you stand you can see right across the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley out into northern Worcestershire, south west Staffordshire and tall hills in southern Shropshire beyond.

When you reach the bottom of the golf course, to your left there is a path concealed in some bushes.

Head down this path as it weaves through thick woodland and undergrowth.

After some distance it comes out near a stile with houses visible in the distance beyond.

Cross over the stile and look for a path in the grass leading off to the right, close to a hedgerow and fence line.

Follow this path for a short distance.

Then head left and it begins to head downhill in a diagonal direction.

Follow the path as it slopes down across the hillside.

Presently it leads you down near the backs of some garages and a couple of disused sheds which look like they once housed livestock.

Here walk to the left along the backs of the garages.

Ahead of you across a small patch of wasteland there stands a working men’s club.

Walk towards the side of the working men’s club and then turn right walking down their driveway to the road beyond.

Once on the road turn right.

Then more or less immediately cross the road turning left, heading down a slope beside a surviving row of Victorian terraces.

This leads to a footpath running off to the right.

Soon the footpath joins a road.

When you join the road keep on walking downhill across the estate of 1970s vintage houses.

Presently, opposite an small estate of fairly new redbrick houses another road is reached.

Here turn left and begin walking downhill, past an interesting small estate of three storey modernist houses.

At the bottom you reach the Dudley No.2 Canal (which in the form of a walk from Halesowen to Tipton, via Dudley town centre has previously been featured on Walk Midlands). At one time it extended as far as Selly Oak in south Birmingham along the infamous Lapal section.

To reach the canal towpath you have to cross over the single lane road bridge in front of you. It is potentially quite dangerous, as there is nothing to indicate to car drivers whether another vehicle is already trying to cross on the other side. The accepted solution to this appears to be for drivers to proceed at speed repeatedly, sounding their horn, so as to warn other road users they are coming.

On the other side of the bridge, there is a pathway off to the right leading down onto the towpath.

You are now in Sandwell Council’s Warrens Hall Nature Reserve. It sits on the edge of the large village of Netherton in the Borough of Dudley, which is your destination. 

Today there is a wild beauty to the Nature Reserve. However, if you look closely at the tops of the mounds where on sunny days picnickers sit, children sit and sunbathers gather black dirt is visible. This is the spoil from the enormous Windmill End Colliery which worked the site up until 1928. That nearly 100 years later its waste is still visible in the landscape years of mining created, is testimony to the sheer volume of work that went into driving its tunnels 160 metres underground.

In front of the Nature Reserve as you continue along the towpath the remains of wharfs which once enabled boats to dock near the colliery and other industries such as sawmills, foundries and brickworks which once clustered along the banks of the canal in this area.

Today in the tranquil environment of the Nature Reserve with Black Country residents of all ages out relaxing and enjoying themselves by the waterside the area’s heavy industrial past seems very far away. But the entire landscape, that the people enjoy (not least the canal) and the settlements where they live their everyday lives, would not exist without the shadow of this carbon intensive history.

Presently the canal reaches a junction. Here the old meandering line of the Dudley Canal heads off towards the centre of Netherton and a long way round to the 2.9 kilometre long tunnel that takes it beneath Dudley to Tipton and the Birmingham Canal Navigation.

At this point there are two options for continuing the walk. Having reached the edge of Netherton you can head into the village’s centre, have a look around, visit the famous Ma Pardoe’s Old Swan pub, and then catch one of the frequent buses to Dudley or Merry Hill Shopping Centre, for an onwards connection home. Or alternatively, having visited Netherton or not, you can head back to the Stour Valley Railway Line with its trains between Wolverhampton and Birmingham, via the Netherton Tunnel.

This grand piece of mid-Victorian engineering is nearly two miles long and runs right beneath the Rowley Hills. It was cut in the 1850s and was the last tunnel of any substance dug on the UK canal network. Opened in 1858 it provides a short cut underneath the Rowley Hills and the Sandwell village of Tividale to the canal basin at Dudley Port and the Birmingham Canal Navigations. In contrast to the older tunnels cut in the 1790s by the Dudley Canal Company, this tunnel is big. So big that two narrowboats can pass each other going different directions inside and there is space left over for a towpath on either side.

Getting Back

Via Netherton High Street

You reach the junction where the canal splits into the original section from the 1790s which meanders around through Netherton, and then passes beneath Dudley to Tipton through the caverns, and the more direct 1850s link to the Birmingham Canal Navigations which runs through Netherton Tunnel beneath the Rowley Hills.

Here turn left and begin walking along the towpath into the centre of Netherton.

You pass through the Bumble Hole Nature Reserve which is managed by Dudley Council.

Having walked through the nature reserve you arrive at a road bridge.

On the other side of the bridge you cross a concrete paved area lined with small workshops. Canal boats moor up here.

There are good views here back towards Turner’s Hill.

Past this section, beyond another road bridge, the towpath becomes more conventional in appearance again.

Keep walking along the towpath for several minutes, passing by some fairly recently constructed flats, and an incredibly verdant looking canal boat mooring.

Presently after a sharp bend a third road bridge appears.

Approaching it there is a long sloping concrete ramp leading off the towpath. Head up this ramp.

At the top of the ramp you are on the road which runs steadily uphill into the centre of Netherton.

Turn right and begin walking up it.

Via the Netherton Tunnel

You reach the junction where the canal splits into the original section from the 1790s which meanders around through Netherton, and then passes beneath Dudley to Tipton through the caverns, and the more direct 1850s link to the Birmingham Canal Navigations which runs through Netherton Tunnel beneath the Rowley Hills.

Here on the right there is a bridge across the canal.

Use the ramp to the left to get up onto the bridge and cross the canal.

Walk straight ahead along the path in front of you.

Here in front of you, just off to the right you see the locally iconic remains of Cobb’s Engine House. Constructed in the 1830s for nearly 100 years it pumped hundreds of thousands of litres of water each day out of the Windmill End Colliery, and into the canal, keeping both in business.

Before you reach this industrial relic, on your left there is a fairly steep flight of steps down to the canal.

At the bottom of the steps turn right.

Here you see the Netherton Tunnel, all three kilometres of it looming ahead of you. Fascinatingly, the ubiquitous and utterly bonkers Monarch’s Way utilises the tunnel as part of its 650 odd mile long route.

See you on the other side!

Three bumply kilometres later, stepping out blinking into the light, you are near Dudley Port Railway Station on the Birmingham to Wolverhampton Railway Line.

Walk a short way down the towpath towards a bridge. This is an aqueduct carrying another canal over the top of you.

On the far side of the bridge there are some steps cut into the bank on your right.

Head up these steps.

At the top turn right and walk across the aqueduct.

On the far side turn right again and head down a fairly steep ramp to the towpath at the bottom.

Follow the towpath for several hundred metres, past some interesting industrial buildings, to the Birmingham Canal Network mainline canal.

Upon reaching the mainline canal turn left and walk for several hundred metres more.

You will see the railway line embankment and the railway power supply pylons on your right.

Presently on your left, just before an aqueduct across a road; you come to some steps.

Head left down these steps.

At the bottom you are on a major dual carriageway.

Turn right at the bottom of the steps and pass beneath the aqueduct, and the railway bridge just beyond it.

Just after the railway bridge on the left hand side of the road is the access point for Dudley Port Railway Station.

Dudley Port is served by fairly frequent trains in the direction of both Birmingham and Wolverhampton.