Distance: 9 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: medium

Get the route via: Ordnance Survey Maps

Walk from the centre of Walsall into former mining country along the McClean Way greenway to just south of Chasewater and then along footpaths and through the village of Norton Canes to beside Chasewater and then the short distance into Burntwood.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

Watering the “Curly Wurly”

Chasewater, just below Burntwood, where Staffordshire melds in West Midlands county is a 90 hectare canal feeder reservoir. The largest in the western part of the Midlands region.

This gargantuan water repository – significantly greater in area than 100 full sized football pitches – was constructed in the second half of the 1790s to keep the water levels in the Wyrley and Essington Canal constant.

Nicknamed “the curly wurly” for its expansive and meandering course, the Wyrley and Essington Canal expanded to serve the growing industrial towns and villages between Walsall and Lichfield in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries.

During this period, the region above Walsall connected with, but in its own way quite distinct from the Black Country as a whole, was a hive of little collieries and clay pits. All of which were served by an intricate maze of industrial waterways and tramroads.

Chasewater, which takes its name from Cannock Chase to its north west, where much of the water it collects flows from, was a critical piece of infrastructure serving the region’s immediate region’s waterways, as well as the wider Birmingham Canal Navigations to the south.

The importance of the canals was not diminished by the construction of a thick network of steam powered railways, including around, and even across Chasewater, during the 1840s. Indeed during the late 19th and 20th Century projects were undertaken to raise the dams and make the reservoir’s capacity even greater.

In 1954 shortly after the canal network was nationalised by the post-World War II Labour government, a decision was taken to close many of the northerly branches of the Wyrley and Essington Canal, including the spectacular lock flight connecting Walsall and the Black Country to Lichfield.

Follow the closure of parts of the network it served Chasewater’s importance to the canal network diminished. However, its amenity value was recognised by the south Staffordshire local authorities ringing its shore line. Brownhills Urban District Council bought the reservoir in 1957 from British Waterways for £5,600, a low price even then.

Since its purchase in the 1950s Chasewater and its surroundings has been owned and managed by a succession of local authorities, the current owner being Staffordshire County Council. It is popular with dinghy sailors and other boating and watercraft enthusiasts. As the industries based around the lake went into decline after World War II so that land has been reclaimed and transformed into healthland, not unlike that found on nearby Cannock Chase. There are, and have been, other recreational uses of the reservoir’s shores. It is ringed on two and a bit sides by the Chasewater Railway, an enthusiasts heritage railway which preserves and celebrates industrial trains and wagons. While for a time from the early 1960s there was a funfair, but that is now long gone.

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.

This walk from Walsall to Burntwood via Chasewater begins from Park Street, the stretch of high street in front of Walsall Railway Station.

Immediately opposite the entrance to the Saddlers Shopping Centre, which stands above Walsall Railway Station, is Butlers Passage.

Walk straight ahead down Butlers Passage which leads to Walsall Bus Station.

At the bus station keep on walking straight ahead, keeping to the left, walking along Hatherton Road which leads past a JobCentre and several offices of the local council towards the edge of Walsall town centre.

Presently you come to where Hatherton Street branches off Hatherton Road running to the left, beside a set of traffic lights.

Here turn left and begin walking along Hatherton Street.

Soon you reach the A4148 dual carriageway. Cross straight over and keep on walking down Hatherton Street on the opposite side of the road.

You soon enter a residential area. At the bottom of Hatherton Street, slightly off to the right on the other side of the road, there is a road lined with late Victorian terraced houses, called Cecil Street. Cross the road here, and turn left onto Cecil Street.

Keep on walking down Cecil Street for some distance.

Soon you come to a t-junction. Here take the left hand arm and keep walking, following the road.

As you head down hill off to the right there is a gateway leading onto a scrubby, wooded; patch of ground next to a cemetery. Turn right through this gateway. This is National Cycle Route Five, which north of Walsall is known as the McClean Way, a recently opened and improved cycleway along the route of the former South Staffordshire Railway, which will eventually link Walsall and Lichfield.

Once on the McClean Way turn left and follow the path as it passes close to the side of Walsall’s Ryecroft Cemetery.

Past the Cemetery the well surfaced route runs dead straight for several miles towards Pelsall, a former industrial village a couple of miles north of Walsall.

You walk along the McClean Way making good time for several miles towards Pesall. The flow of your steps only occasionally being broken by the roads that cut across the path here and there.

The landscape is a mixture of houses from various eras, some pretty new, some built during the interwar period, mixed up with distinctly rural sections.

Partway through Pelsall you reach the point where the smooth tarmac surface of National Cycle Route Five ends, though the McClean Way continues, perfectly passable, albeit potentially a lot more muddy (as it was the day I walked the route at the end of March 2023).

Head off slightly to the right behind a estate of modern houses, and keep on walking along the wide, well trodden, but unsurfaced former trackbed.

Continue walking until you reach a rough concrete wall. Here there are some steps which you walk over. Presumably the wall will be removed as development of the McClean Way progresses.

Keep walking straight ahead on the other side of the wall. Here the path is somewhat less kempt, but still clearly well trodden.

Continue a short distance until you come to a wooden post on the edge of where the McClean Way enters a thicket.

Here on the left there is a footpath running across the bottom of a section of grassy parkland leading towards a housing estate.

Turn left and follow the path across the bottom of the parkland, continue on the far side following the path down a snicket between the bottom of some 1960s vintage house back gardens and a stand of woodland.

Partway down the snicket there is a path running to the right through the woodland.

Turn right and follow this path as it winds through the trees.

Presently it joins a wider track running to the left which you follow through the trees, bounded by new housing estates on either side.

You come to an access road for the estates which you cross, and keep following the path as it runs behind the back of houses.

After some distance you reach a gateway leading onto a meadow near the infamously curly Wyrley and Essington Canal.

Upon reaching the meadow turn left and walk a short distance onto the Wyrley and Essington’s towpath.

Once on the towpath turn right and walk along it for a short distance.

Soon you reach a bridge across the canal, evidently once part of the industrial railway systems that once crisscrossed the area. Here there is a ramp just before the bridge, or a set of steps just after it, which enable you to get up onto the trackbed of the former railway.

Once on the same level as the bridge, use it to cross the canal, heading down a well used path running through trees above the level of some factory units to your right.

Soon you come to a fork in the path where you turn right leading out onto a lane running past a series of factory units and depots.

Enter the woodland and immediately after the gate take a well trodden path running to your right into the trees.

Enter the woodland and immediately after the gate take a well trodden path running to your right into the trees.

This woodland comprises part of Brownhills Common. One of a large number of relatively large surviving scraps of common land in the area. Attesting in a way to the Black Country and wider South Staffordshire traditions of mining and other resource extraction on common land. Evidentially these scraps survived being enclosed. Today in the area north of Walsall they form part of a community interest company project called The Forest of Mercia, which provides environmental education, runs environmental projects and is steadily reforesting land in north Walsall, Cannock Chase and Lichfield Districts. There is even a walking route, marked on Ordnance Survey, and a respectable day’s hike in its own right.

Keep following the waymarked path through the trees, which especially on the wet day that I walked the route, has a distinct feel of Middle Earth or perhaps an ancient Staffordshire myth like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, for some distance.

Presently you come to a wooden post, here follow a path running to your right.

Continue along this path across Brownhills Common for some further distance.

Approaching a boardwalk the path takes quite a sharp turn to the right. Keep on following it crossing the boardwalk.

Presently you approach a clearing with a waymark. Here you are nearing the A452 road. Turn left here and follow the path as it winds its way steadily towards the side of the road.

Soon the path emerges onto the side of the A452.

Cross here making for a footpath on the other side.

Once on the footpath walk, following a rough path to the right, heading towards a bank where there are some steps cut.

The steps lead up onto the trackbed of a disused railway. Once on the trackbed turn left and begin walking along the grassy bed of the former railway through the trees.

Presently you reach the side of the even busier A5 which you cross.

On the far side of the A5 you head straight down a footpath running through scrubby woodland, utterly strewn when I walked the route, with fly tipped rubbish.

Pick your way along this path for some distance as it runs along an overgrown disused railway behind the back of houses.

Eventually you reach a stile leading up beside a bridge over the line of the former railway, which you climb. By now you can clearly hear the sound of the M6 Toll a short distance away.

Once up on the level of the old bridge you turn left walking into the residential area.

You soon reach a road, where you turn right and begin walking through the residential area.

Soon you reach a roadbridge up over the M6 Toll, which you cross.

On the other side of the motorway you are in Staffordshire approaching the edge of the former mining village of Norton Canes in the far south of Cannock Chase District. Here you get your first glimpses of Chasewater.

Keep walking straight up the road towards the edge of Norton Canes.

Upon entering the outskirts of the large village keep walking straight until you reach a small roundabout.

Here turn right and walk down a road past a working men’s club and convenience store on your right.

Keep on walking down the road for some distance approaching the edge of the village.

At the edge of the village on the right hand side of the road there is a footpath leading down towards the north western end of Chasewater.

You are now in Lichfield District walking along the southern shore of the reservoir.

Keep following the path for quite some distance along the western shore of Chasewater.

Soon you reach the causeway which the Chasewater Railway runs across, with the bulk of Chasewater in front of you.

Here turn left and cross the causeway.

On the far side of the causeway there is a crossing point where pedestrians can cross the railway line. Here head through a gate on the right and begin walking across the heathland that comprises a country park to the north of Chasewater just south of Burntwood town.

Follow the path across the healthland.

Presently you approach the Chasewater Railway’s Chasewater Heaths Station on the edge of Burntwood. Head left here through a gate and across the track onto the side of the busy A5195 running along the southern edge of Burntwood.

Cross over the road here and begin walking north along the main A5190 into Burntwood.

You round several traffic islands with a mixture of new housing estates, retail parks and disused land behind hoardings off them.

Presently having just passed a large branch of Morrison’s and a drive-thru McDonalds there is a cul-de-sac of 1930s vintage semi-detached houses off to the left.

Turn left and begin walking along this road.

This leads you up into the centre of Burntwood by a 1960s shopping centre at the heart of the town, just off to the left.

This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

Burntwood is well served by a small number of buses. From either the town centre of the main road down towards Chasewater near the Morrison’s and McDonalds buses can be caught running either to Lichfield or Cannock, or Lichfield and south to Walsall. Lichfield to Cannock Services are run by D&G while Lichfield to Walsall services are National Express West Midlands. As of March 2023 both services ran until fairly late in the evening around 20:00 to 21:00 and where at half hourly intervals for most of the day.