Distance: 7.9 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: medium

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

Walk in the centre of mid-Worcestershire from Bromsgrove to Droitwich Spa, mostly along canal towpaths. Droitwich is a town literally constructed on salt.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

A Town Built on Salt

Christened Salinae by the Romans, the first group known to have built a settlement there, Droitwich Spa has always been all about salt. The first written reference to the town from the early middle ages, when it was simply referred to as Saltwich, describes:  

“The marvel of a hot pool… surrounded by a wall made of bricks and stone. Men go into it to bathe at all times, and the temperature changes for each of them as they wish: if one man wants a cold bath, it will be cold, and if another wants a hot bath, it will be hot.”

-Historia Brittonum

In its natural state water flowing from Drotwich’s salt pools contains ten times more saline than the sea, comparable only to the Dead Sea.

During the middle ages and early modern period salt was a precious commodity due to its preservative qualities. Something essential at a time before canning and freezing became viable methods of long-term food storage. Like Wirksworth and Castleton in the Peak District with their lead, equally prized for its water proofing malleable qualities during those eras, Droitwich grew rich on salt. Indeed, so much water was taken from the salty ground beneath the town that the ground began to warp and shrink, causing the subsidence that afflicts some of the town’s older buildings which are buckled and twisted to this day.

So important was Droitwich in the 18th Century that a canal was dug there running for around six miles from the River Severn. It was only later in the 1850s right at the end of Britain’s canal building boom that the town was connected, as since 2011 it has been once again, to the far nearer Worcester and Birmingham Canal one and a half miles to the east. Nowadays Droitwich is a key calling point on the Mid-Worcestershire Canal Ring, a route from Worcester, north to Droitwich and then back around again to Worcester via the River Severn.

Despite people having bathed in the salt pools at Droitwich since ancient times, and the town having always been famed for them, it was only in Victorian times that the term “Spa” was affixed to the town’s name. John Corbett, the son of a successful Black Country canal boat flotilla owner, was the person who both reorganised Drotwich’s salt industry into a truly industrial scale operation, and the first person to promote Droitwich extensively as a spa. The wealth his worker’s created was ploughed into Chateau Impney, a vast pseudo-French looking chateau on the edge of Doitwich which, too large and fiddly for pretty much anybody to live in, has long been a hotel. 

These days Droitwich is primarily a dormitory suburb for those enticed there by reasonably good railway connections and the town’s proximity to the M5. The town’s population has more than quadrupled from fewer than 7,000 to over 25,000 since the 1960s, making Droitwich one of Worcestershire’s larger towns and not all that much smaller than Bromsgrove. Interestingly the town has an unusually large number of manufacturing concerns as well as warehouses, far more than during the mid-20th Century giving it a surprisingly industrial feel for mid-Worcestershire. 

Health and safety concerns shut Doitwich’s indoor brine baths in 2008 ending that aspect of the town’s spa heritage. However, it is still possible to bath in the town’s impossibly salty water. During the 1930s a saltwater lido was constructed in a park close to the town centre. By the 1990s it had become rundown and unfashionable leading to the district council mothballing it. Campaigners then agitated for its reopening, culminating in a dramatic parish poll by Droitwich Town Council in 2005 which saw ninety eight percent of participating electors vote to restore the salt water lido. Wychavon District and Droitwich Town Council adhered to the elector’s steer restoring the lido which reopened in 2007. The salt water lido remains a popular day out with an interwar feel to this day, bringing Droitwich Spa’s past into the present day.

The Walk

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

This walk was created using Ordnance Survey Explorer. To subscribe and also get Ordnance Survey Maps on your phone, click the banner above.

This walk from Bromsgrove to Droitwich Spa, primarily along canal towpaths, begins from Bromsgrove Railway Station.

Upon alighting at Bromsgrove head across the station footbridge to the forecourt in front of the station.

Here head to the right crossing the car park.

Near the far side of the car park head to the left up a road towards the high street in the Bromsgrove suburb of Little Aston.

Once on the high street turn right.

Walk a short distance further along the high street until you come to a crossroads. Here turn right, heading towards a bridge which crosses over the railway line.

Then continue walking for several hundred metres past scattered suburban housing estates pepper potted amongst several of the numerous sports clubs which are a fixture of Bromsgrove’s edgelands. Be careful to mind the cars on this lane as some travel quite fast, and don’t always anticipate other road users might not be driving.

Presently you come to a T-junction, at this point take the right hand turn and walk a short way along Lower Gambolds Lane.

Shortly after this a footpath sign is reached on your left hand side pointing off into the fields next to a farmhouse style building.

Turn off the road here and use the pedestrian bridge to cross the small brook and head across the field.

There are sturdy, quite recently fitted gates in place to show you that you’re headed in the right direction.

Keep walking across the fields towards a house and outbuildings visible on the brow of the hill.

At the top there is another gate leading out onto a tarmacked lane.

Turn right onto this road and follow it a short distance, turn left at the bend in the road, and follow it down a short but quite steep hill.

At the bottom you will reach a bridge, this bridge carries cars and other road users over the Worcester and Birmingham Canal.

Here you are slightly under halfway up the impressive Tardebigge Flight of locks which takes the canal to the level of the Birmingham Plateau before it flows into the city. With 30 locks, encompassing a total of 3.6km of canal, which serves to raise the water a total of 67 metres across the flight, they are the longest span of locks in the whole of the UK. A substantial engineering achievement when the navvies cut them in the late 1800s and early 1810s allowing boats to travel from what’s now West Midlands County and further north down to the River Severn and on to Bristol.

Cross over the bridge and turn onto the towpath on your left. From here the next section of the walk – covering a shade over five miles – is quite straightforward as you just follow the canal footpath.

Now on the towpath of the Worcester and Birmingham Canal turn left passing underneath the bridge you have just crossed.

The first stage of the towpath stretch of the walk takes you past the last stretch of the Tardebigge flight of locks.

At the bottom of the flight of locks sits Stoke Pound, part of the scattered village of Stoke which forms the southern edge of Bromsgrove.

You continue passing the large Queen’s Head pub out onto a straight stretch of canal in open countryside.

Soon you approach the large, and recently much extended, village of Stoke Prior.

Stoke Prior has an industrial and commercial feel unusual for mid-Worcestershire. This dates back to the early 19th Century when the Worcester and Birmingham Canal Company had workshops there, and was enhanced in the 1850s when John Corbett of Chateau Impney fame, bought the saltworkings in the area and began refining the mineral on an industrial scale. Salt working in the area completely ceased in 2012, but Stoke Prior retains a large business park and several factories, including the headquarters of brush and paint makers LG Harris & Co. who arrived in the village from Birmingham in the 1930s.

Continue along the canal through Stoke Prior.

To your right as you walk are the immensely tall BBC Radio Four long wave transmitters. Erected in the earliest days of broadcasting and due to keep going until the supply of no longer manufactured glass vales which keep the towers online is exhausted.

Continue along the canal, taking care in places as the towpath is quite muddy or otherwise poorly maintained in places, for some distance.

Presently you can see the Abberley Hills in north west Worcestershire clearly to the right, and the Malverns in the south west of the county straight ahead of you.

After some distance you come to the point where you leave the Worcester and Birmingham Canal to head west towards Droitwich. Straight ahead of you a ramp runs off the canal to up onto the level of the B4090, which according to the Ordnance Survey, is a Roman road.

Once on the road turn right and walk over a bridge across the Worcester and Birmingham Canal.

On the far side of the bridge look out on your right for a path running through a metal fence.

Once through the fence turn left and walk down a short flight of steps to join the towpath.

On the towpath turn left passing beneath a bridge. Keep walking for some distance.

Presently you come to a fork in the path here, take the right hand fork and continue straight ahead passing a marina on the far side of the waterway.

Soon you come to a flight of steps up onto the level of a bridge serving the access road for the marina. These you climb.

Once on the level of the bridge turn right and cross. On the far side look out on your left for steps back down onto the towpath.

Back on the towpath keep walking straight ahead passing a short flight of locks.

A little way past the locks you come to the narrow tunnel which carries the canal underneath the M5 motorway and into Droitwich.

Here turn left and cross the little footbridge over the canal, continuing a short stretch of woodland footpath, to reach the side of the A4090.

Once beside the road turn right and walk underneath the bridge which carries the M5 over the A-road.

On the far side keep walking straight ahead along the side of the road. After a short distance you cross the mouth of a side road which runs into an estate.

Once on the far side to your right the canal is visible again. Look out for a gap in the fence to the right which enables you to get back onto the towpath.

Having rejoined the towpath keep walking straight ahead down the cut towards the centre of Droitwich Spa.

Presently you reach Vines Park which both the canal and the River Salwarpe flow through. Here continue to the right.

Walk towards the Max Sinclair Memorial Lock, the plaque affixed to the lock gates arm. They are named after the pioneering conservationist who campaigned for decades from the 1950s to get Droitwich’s canals restored.

Just past the Memorial Lock turn left and follow a path up towards the A4090 where it forms part of Droitwich’s bizarre inner ring road, passing through a children’s play area on the way. 

Passing through a gate you reach the side of the road. Here turn right and keep walking along the side of the ring road until you are level with a large 2000s vintage branch of Waitrose.

Level with Waitrose, cross the road and carry on straight along the front of the shop. Once you reach the end of the shop keep on walking straight ahead down a pedestrianised passage to reach Droitwich town centre.

At the end of the passageway you are one of central Droitwich’s more historically preserved roads.

Here turn right and walk a short distance until you reach the little square where St. Andrew’s Church and Droitwich Old Town Hall stand.

This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

Droitwich Spa Railway Station is fairly well served. There are half hourly services throughout the day to both Worcester and Birmingham. Half of the services continue beyond Worcester towards Malvern and Hereford, while half of the Birmingham services go via Kidderminster, Stourbridge and Smethwick, while the other half go express to New Street calling only at Bromsgrove, University and sometimes Barnt Green. Droitwich has a limited bus service to Kidderminster, with a more frequent service to Worcester and Bromsgrove along the A38.