Distance: 4.9 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: medium

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

Walk from Cheddleton along the Caldon Canal 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

Leek’s Secular Steeple

Known as “the Queen of the Staffordshire Moorlands”, Leek is a hilly town in a hilly part of the Midlands. Many of its hills are crowned with steeples of various sorts, some religious, some secular.

Amongst the most imposing, in perhaps an unusually Dutch looking style for the western part of the Midlands, is the imposing brick tower of the Nicholson Institute. Constructed from dark red brick, rendered yet blacker by soot in years gone past, the Nicholson Institute and its tower look almost 200 years older than they in fact are. Having been constructed in the 1880s in the so-called “Queen Anne” style, which perhaps explains the building’s late 17th Century Low Country aesthetic.

The Nicholson Institute which opened in 1884 was constructed as a library, art gallery and adult education facility to the designs of local architecture firm Sugden & Son. Unusually for the era the Sugden’s were keen to retain and authentically preserve old buildings. For this reason the faux-Early Modern Nicholson Institute stands behind the genuinely 17th Century Greystones House.

These days the Nicholson Institute now run in its various guises by Staffordshire County Council and Staffordshire Moorlands District Council remains used for the same purposes it was originally constructed. The local museum occupies part of the building, while the art gallery programmes a remarkably wide array of contemporary temporary and touring exhibitions. Something relatively unusual for a town like Leek situated in a predominantly rural area with a population just over 20,000 strong.

As of 2025 a major renovation project is underway which will likely ensure that the Nicholson Institute continues serving Leek as a cultural hub for at least a further 140 years.

The Walk

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

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This walk from Cheddleton to Leek, home of the Nicholson Institute art gallery, primarily along the Caldon Canal begins right by the waterway.

Alight the bus in Cheddleton at the stop beside the Caldon Canal next to the Flint Mill.

Walk past the Flint Mill, a rare surviving example of a late 18th Century flint mill, which used to grind flint for use in the north Staffordshire pottery industry, the resulting wears being shipped along the Caldon Canal towards Stoke-on-Trent.

Once on the Caldon Canal towpath turn right. Walk the mile or so along the canal until you reach the main when you reach the junction with the Leek branch.

Here turn right and pick up the towpath towards Leek.

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.