Distance: 13 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: medium

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

Walk from Stoke-on-Trent Railway Station along the Caldon Canal all the way to Leek, a market town on the edge of the Peak District known as “the Queen of the Moorlands”.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

The Queen of the Moorlands

Leek is situated in north eastern Staffordshire, situated at the point where the hilly countryside lying eastwards of Stoke-on-Trent start to turn into the Peak District proper, has a typical origins story for a Midlands market town. That is to say that in the early 13th Century the lord of the manor who was the Earl of Chester received a market charter from King John, spurring the growth of the settlement.

Its status as a market town on the edge of the Pennines means that Leek has characteristics in common with similar towns like Macclesfield, New Mills and Glossop further north, Ashbourne to the south and Penistone in Yorkshire to the north east. It has a comparable history with the weaving and cloth making trades, William Morris even visited in 1870 to study textiles and dyeing in Leek.

While Leek with a modern population of just over 20,000 remained small in comparison to the sprawling Stoke-on-Trent conurbation nearby to its west, the town is the largest in the Staffordshire Moorlands District, nicknamed “the Queen of the Moorlands”. It is certainly grand enough. For a small town there are many large, impressive buildings, generally well used and maintained to this day. Chief amongst them is the Nicholson Institute, a spectacular building on the edge of the historic centre, with a vast highly ornamented tower in Queen Anne gothic style. It opened in 1884 and contains the town’s museum, art gallery and branch of the Staffordshire Library Service.

In addition to its location on the edge of the Peak District, Leek sits in the upper Churnet Valley, at the top of an interesting and beautiful area – lying between Leek and Uttoxeter – known as the Staffordshire Rhineland.

This is the territory served by the Caldon Canal which once twisted through the eastern Staffordshire countryside between Stoke-on-Trent and Uttoxeter. Today the section south of Froghall is long gone, replaced with a railway line which was in turn transformed into a bridleway decades ago, though a surprisingly large amount of the old canal remains visible, even in water, here and there.

The Caldon Canal to Leek however, remains open, even though the town’s canal basin is now no more. It was constructed in the late 1790s after years of discussion between the canal company and the civic leaders. Prior to the construction of the Peak Forest Canal there were plans for the Caldon Canal to be extended north from Leek, skirting the Peak District, all the way to Marple, which these days is on the south western edge of Great Manchester. However, that plan never transpired, and Leek remains to this day a major local hub, a pleasant place to live, and a major road hub for those traversing the southern Peak District. While also being distinctive, quite self contained, and seeming decidedly far away from any other settlements.

The Walk

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

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This walk to Leek 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.

Continue walking along the canal towpath, crossing the famously damp, quite marshy area, known as the “Head of Trent” which is where the River Trent slowly begins to form south of its source at Biddulph Moor. Partway between where you are walking and Biddulph Moor lies Knypersley Reservoir.

Soon you approach the village of Stockton Brook. Here there are a few locks which you walk past. Some of the small number of locks on the Caldon Canal which was mostly built without them.

Just past the locks you head up a ramp to a road bridge. Here once on the road turn left and cross the bridge (there is an adjacent footbridge) then turn right back onto the towpath now on the opposite back of the canal to where it was previously.

Continue walking along the towpath heading towards Leek.

Presently you reach a footbridge across a narrow arm of the canal, which you cross heading to the right, and continue along the towpath.

After some further difference you round a tight bend with an old canal cottage situated next to it.

Continue along the canal until you reach the junction where the Leek and the Froghall branches separate.

At this point you carry straight on walking a little further along the Froghall branch.

Keep on walking, the hilly wooded countryside, is prime Staffordshire Rhineland territory.

Presently you reach a sturdy stone aqueduct carrying the Leek branch of the canal across the Froghall branch.

Immediately after walking beneath the bridge on the left there is a flight of steps. Turn left and walk up the steps to the Leek branch of the canal.

At the top turn right and begin walking along the towpath of the Leek branch.

Walking past a row of cottages fronting onto the canal you continue along a narrow stretch of towpath beneath a bridge.

Continue along the towpath through pleasant wooded countryside for quite some distance.

Presently the trees thin-out, you are now approaching the edge of Leek.

Here in front of you is a very short tunnel, albeit running underneath a fairly steep hill which acts as a natural barrier that the canal has to negotiate.

To the right there is a set of stairs. Walk up the stairs and head straight down a track on the far side. From the top you can see Leek in front of you.

Continue walking along the towpath having descended from the top of the hill.

Soon you reach the end of the canal. It stops quite abruptly as Leek’s former canal basin no longer exists. Here there is a footpath running along the edge of an industrial estate on the edge of the town. Turn right and walk along it until you reach a road through the industrial estate.

Upon reaching the road turn left and walk for quite some distance, straight along the road, heading towards the main A53 road from Stoke-on-Trent to Leek.

When you get to the A53 turn right walking past a branch of Morrison’s on the edge of the town centre. Crossing a junction continue on up the hill straight in front of you.

Presently you come to a crossroads junction with a black and white timbered late 19th or early 20th Century building next to you and a brick 1980s or 1990s vintage shopping centre in front of you. It still had a Wlko sign on it when I walked the route in late October 2023.

Here off to the left there is a road running uphill towards Leek’s market place.

Turn left and walk up this road.

Near the top of the hill on the right there is a pedestrianised road which leads into the marketplace. Turn right onto this road and follow it into the marketplace.

Getting Back

Leek no longer has a railway station, however, there are buses to many of the towns which lie nearby as well as Stoke-on-Trent city centre. Some of these services are significantly more frequent than others. At the time of writing in October 2023 both D&G Buses and First ran services to Hanley in Stoke from Leek, D&G’s services running half hourly, with the last one leaving at 20:15. Other services run to Buxton, Ashbourne, Macclesfield and outlying settlements like Cheddleton and Cheadle, but these are far less frequent than the ones into Hanley Bus Station in Stoke-on-Trent.