Distance: Around 8.7 miles
Difficulty of the Terrain: medium
Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox
Walk across the Warwickshire countryside along the Grand Union Canal towpath, between Kingswood just inside Warwickshire’s county boundaries and the county town of Warwick with it’s famous castle.
The Story
The Walk
Getting Back
Warwick’s Show Castle
Standing on a sandstone promontory at a commanding bend in the River Avon Warwick Castle appears like everybody’s idea of what a castle should look like.
It sits right in the heart of Warwick, Warwickshire’s county town which has possessed fortifications since 914 in the early 10th Century. The current castle’s foundation dates to 1068 a couple of years after the Norman conquest, though most of the basic structure visible today dates from the 14th Century. Warwick Castle is an unusual survival as relatively few towns of Warwick’s size in the UK have a castle in the heart of them.
Warwick Castle remained a serious fortification until the early 17th Century when the Elizabethan politician-cum-civil servant Fulke Greville was given it by Elizabeth I as a reward for his service. He found it in a parlous state, and spent the equivalent of £4 million in 2020s prices doing it up as his edge of town retreat.
In this way Warwick Castle while still possessing the outward form of a 14th Century Castle came to be a stately home. It continued in this capacity throughout the 17th, 18th, 19th and for much of the 20th Century.
The Greville family continued to own Warwick Castle throughout this time. In 1759 they were made the Earls of Warwick.
By the 19th Century Warwick Castle due to its unique status as an idealised, non-ruined medieval castle had become a tourist attraction. Though visitors had been coming to Warwick just to see it since at least the 17th Century. In 1885 the Duke of Warwick managed to annoy Warwick’s hoteliers by closing the castle to visitors, purportedly leading to a large number of wealthy American tourists choosing to leave the town early or leave it off their itineraries entirely. This state of affairs did not last with a permanent ticket booth and paid guides having been brought in by the Earl of Warwick by the beginning of the 20th Century.
Throughout the 20th Century the Earls of Warwick seeing a commercial opening, not least because of the hordes of tourists who descend upon Warwickshire because it can when viewed from a certain angle appear like the quintessence of England, expanded the site as a tourist attraction. After all, having seen snatches of the Coteswolds and Shakespeare’s home town, what could be more English than visiting an actual castle amidst a medieval town?
In 1978 the Greville’s sold Warwick Castle lock, stock, keep and barrel to the Tussauds Group. While Warwick Castle remains a scheduled historic monument the Tussauds Group and their successors have run it as a pure tourist attraction ever since. A jobbing weddings, woodland lodges and concerts venue. As well as a historical theme park where falconry, jousting displays and trebuchets jostle with waxworks of Winston Churchill and other historical displays. A great day out for all the family.
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.
Upon exiting Lapworth Station (which is actually in the village of Kingswood) onto the forecourt, turn right.
Walk along a residential road for some distance heading towards a main road.
Upon reaching the main road turn left.
Walk a little distance along the main road through Kingswood.
Soon the road begins running steadily uphill towards a bridge across the Grand Union Canal.
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.
Just before you reach the bridge look out on the right for a flight of steps running down to the canal towpath. Turn right and head down these steps.
Once on the towpath begin walking straight ahead.
Soon, near the edge of Kingswood you cross a bridge over the little waterway which interconnects the Grand Union and Stratford-upon-Avon Canals. This is Kingswood Junction.
On the far side of the bridge keep walking straight along the Grand Union Canal towpath in front of you.
You now follow the waterway for seven or eight miles until you reach the edge of Warwick town centre.
Winding your way through the mid-Warwickshire countryside.
One really interesting feature in the first half of the canal based section of the walk is the cutting just before the village of Shrewley. It is seriously impressive just how deep into the rock the workers who carried out the canal enhancements in the 1930s cut into the rock. Today it is a Site of Special Scientific Interest.
At the far of the cutting lies the Shrewley Tunnel which carries the waterway under the village.
There is no towpath through the tunnel, instead it slopes upwards towards a smaller brick tunnel large enough for a person leading a horse, but not more.
Once inside the tunnel it continues to slope upwards towards the southern portal.
Once out of the tunnel it is a short distance between two houses to the main road through the village.
Having reached the main road cross straight over.
On the far side there is an opening leading onto an unpaved lane. Head down here.
Follow the lane for a few moments, presently you reach a small car park for people to access the canal.
Head onto the footpath at the end of this car park.
Presently it returns you to the towpath enabling you to continue on your way.
A short way on from Shrewley you pass very near Hatton Station. This quiet and relatively isolated station on the Chiltern Mainline has services running into Leamington Spa, which offers services to Coventry, as well as Oxford, London and the south coast, and back towards Solihull and Birmingham. As such there is an option of ending the walk early here.
Carrying on along the canal towpath, you presently pass a large boatyard on your left.
Then enter another impressively deep cutting, lined with trees at the top. This section of the walk is near Hatton Country World, an old farm which has been converted into a series of craft outlets, cafes, and attractions for children. It is a relatively minor diversion from the canal so offers refreshment options if you would like them.
After the sandstone cut you reach Hatton Locks. This local flight carries the canal uphill from Warwick, heralding that you are now relatively near your destination.
These enormous locks (by British standards) and the supporting infrastructure of culverts and barge waiting bays is one of the pinnacles of the 1930s modernisation programme.
Near the top of the flight of locks sits the Hatton Locks Cafe. I hurried past, but it looks a nice place to stop for refreshments if you require them.
A little further down on the edge of the village of Hatton itself, the canal towpath switches sides.
To cross you utilise a concrete bridge running across the canal.
Then head to the right back onto the towpath.
Passing a rather bizarre public sculpture sat in a pond on your left.
At this point you are nearing Warwick, but still a couple of miles away.
Keep on walking along the towpath.
You know that you are nearing Warwick when a series of large road bridges over the canal appear.
By this point the flight of locks has finished.
A little way past the road bridges you see a sign for Saltisford Boat Services.
Immediately after passing the sign the canal turns sharply.
At this point you pass under a narrow red brick road bridge.
Just after the road bridge there is a Canal and River Trust sign in blue. This is your cue to leave the canal.
On your left just behind you a flight of steps runs up to the Birmingham Road.
Head up these steps and at the top turn left.
Once on the Birmingham Road follow it for around 10 to 15 minutes into the centre of Warwick.
There are a few interesting sites on the way including a small, derelict chapel jutting out towards the road, which seems reminiscent of a chantry chapel. As well as on your left, a white painted building in the early 19th Century style which apparently was the site of Warwick’s first gasworks in 1822, making the building the earliest gasworks structure still in existence.
A little further on you come to a small roundabout.
Turn right here and head up a short steep slope.
Use the crossing lights to cross the road and head left into a square with a branch of Wetherspoon’s on it.
On one side of the square the offices of the County Council loom from above a library and a post office. This is the centre of Warwick and the historic core can be explored from here. This marks the end of the walk.
Getting Back
Warwick’s relatively small and somewhat dilapidated station is just outside the town centre, and is served relatively infrequently. Though for much of the day there are roughly half hourly services to both Birmingham and Leamington Spa. Heading either five minutes down the line to Leamington, or about 25 minutes the other way to Birmingham Moor Street or Snow Hill, for onward connections from either town, is probably your best bet in terms of getting back. At the time of writing in January 2024 there was also a regular bus service from Warwick to Kenilworth, Leamington Spa and Coventry, as well as a less freqent one to Stratford-upon-Avon and other parts of Warwickshire.