Distance: 12.9 miles
Difficulty of the terrain: medium
Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox
Countryside walk from Dorridge primarily along the Grand Union Canal towpath to historic Warwick, Warwickshire’s county town.
The Story
The Walk
Getting Back
Small Town, Big Church
Warwick, Warwickshire’s pint sized county town, nestled at the crux of the River Avon where the Leam converges with it, has a little cathedral type church.
The Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick is not a cathedral, but there is a Bishop of Warwick, who in the Church of England’s ecclesiastical hierarchy sits beneath the Bishop of Coventry.
It is a tall church, heightened by a huge forty metre tall tower which looms over Warwick. To this day more than 300 years after the tower took on its current shape it remains one of the tallest structures in the town of Warwick.
St. Mary’s foundation appears to lie in the early 12th Century. Favoured by nobility including the Earls of Warwick it was a collegiate church, with cannons organised in a collage.
In 1546 following the Reformation in England the college was dissolved, but St. Mary’s continued as Warwick’s key church.
St. Mary’s medieval era decorative windows were destroyed during the English Civil War, however, it was 1693 when most of the old church was destroyed. The Great Fire of Warwick in 1693 saw most of the town including St. Mary’s burnt to the ground. The church was then reconstructed, taking on more or less its current form by the mid-1700s, with William Wilson’s gothic design, being reconsecrated for worship in 1704.
A major restoration of the church costing £1.4million took place in 2023 after masonry fell from the tower endangering pedestrians walking below.
The Walk
Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox
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 to Warwick begins at Dorridge Railway Station.
Dorridge is a small, almost entirely residential town, which is extremely affluent on the rural fringe of the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull. The town is handily served by both West Midlands Railway and Chiltern trains.
On leaving the Station you are standing on the edge of the parade of shops and restaurants that comprises Dorridge town centre.
Walk a short way, turning left out of the main exit of the station towards the shops.
Immediately on your right on the other side of the road there is a road leading off past a hotel.
Cross over the road and turn right down this road.
Continue on this long, straight road – aptly called Avenue Way – for quite a distance walking past some seriously large houses, constructed during pretty much every era from the early 20th Century onwards.
Presently you come to a small roundabout.
Head across the road and take the second road on your right.
It leads through an estate of modern houses.
After a short while walking along this road the road leaves the town and the houses begin to thin-out.
Just as you are entering open countryside look out on your right for a footpath sign leading down a snicket.
Once sighted, cross over the road and head right down the snicket.
The snicket passes between the gardens of two houses.
Soon you come to a gate at the end of the snicket leading out onto a grassy open field.
Go through the gate and walk more or less straight across the field following the line of the hedgerow to your left.
Pass through the metal gate you come to into the next field.
Inside the next field follow the track curving slight to the right across the field in the direction of a gate leading out onto a lane.
Having passed through the gate, turn left and walk along the lane.
Head along the side of the lane for some distance.
Presently the lane curves quite sharply to the left.
Shortly after this point lookout on your right for a footpath sign just after a small cluster of houses amongst a stand of conifer trees.
Cross over the style by the footpath sign.
Then head down the track beyond.
After a short distance you come to a metal gate.
Head through the metal gate and cross the field beyond, keeping to the left.
The path leads through a small thicket.
On the other side of this thicket to your left there is a metal gate.
This leads into a field, apparently usually used for cattle though it was empty on the day I walked through, that was incredibly muddy.
Once through the gate and into the field, keep fairly close to the hedge on your right and walk across to the other side.
Here you will find a gate beside a tall old tree.
Having walked through the gate you find yourself at the top of an avenue of recently planted trees looking towards an old farmhouse.
Walk towards the old house.
Just before you reach the building there is a metal gate leading onto a footpath.
Once on the footpath turn left and walk along the line of a wooden fence and a hedgerow.
Very soon you emerge onto a driveway.
Turn left and walk along the driveway.
Presently the driveway merges with a road.
Turn right at this point you follow the road for a short distance. It is a fairly busy road so take care.
On the horizon a whitewashed building is visible on your right. This is the King’s Arms Inn, and beyond it stands the King’s Arms Bridge, which crosses the Grand Union Canal.
Once on the other side of the bridge, look out on your right for a set of relatively steep steps down onto the towpath.
At the bottom of the steps turn left and begin walking down the towpath.
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.
All in all, you walk along the Grand Union Canal for more than a mile.
The first section is almost urban in terms of its feel, heading past the large Black Buoy Marina which is a hub for barge owners on this section, which is one foot in the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, one foot in Warwickshire.
Presently it opens out, though still with a large number of barges tethered, some painted with traditional waterways art.
The feel of the canal gets steadily more rural as you move away from Dorridge and its conjoined partner in crime, the similar in spirit, large village of Knowle.
After walking for quite some way passing under several more imposing bridges, you come to the low red brick Turnover Bridge.
The Turnover Bridge carries the towpath over the canal.
After crossing the bridge, turn left keeping on down the towpath. After quite some distance you approach the edge of the village of Kingswood.
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.