Distance: just over 4 miles
Difficulty of the terrain: medium
Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox
Highly varied mixed urban, suburban and exurban walk from the centre of the Black Country town of Dudley to Barrow Hill lying between the edges of the suburban villages of Pensnett and Gornal.
The Story
The Walk
Getting Back
Towering in Terms of Substance
Less dramatic than the shattered post quarrying landscape of Wren’s Nest on the far side of the Midland’s watershed ridge, Barrow Hill stands out in the otherwise relatively flat landscape of western Dudley Borough.
Situated between Russell’s Hall, Pensnett and Gornalwood, Barrow Hill gets its name from a couple of Bronze Age burial chambers, dating back to between 2000 and 700 BCE . Like so many of its peers Barrow Hill was heavily quarried for limestone from at least the 17th Century into the postwar era. Indeed, while Barrow Hill’s setting feels decidedly periurban, a green corridor running from the back of Russell Hall Hospital, over the hill towards West Midland’s boundary with the south western tip of Staffordshire, it is ringed by the remains of industry including the former railway line across Pensnett which once formed part of the Duke of Dudley’s extensive private coal and limestone carrying railways. One former railway line runs past the site where the Crooked House at Himley once stood.
Standing just 178 metres above sea level at its summit, Barrow Hill is at a comparably low level compared to some of the hills in eastern Dudley Borough and adjacent areas of Sandwell, including Turner’s Hill. Or for that matter the Clent Hills to its south west out in Worcestershire. However, its history is at least as dramatic as those more prominent peaks, being a former prehistoric volcano, hence its nickname “the Dudley Volcano”. Indeed, it is the only proven example of surface volcanic activity occurring within the Black Country Geopark area. A reminder of the dramatic period in geological time which shaped the Black Country’s unique geology.
Strikingly Barrow Hill is topped with a large stone cross erected by the Anglican parishioners of St. Mark’s church in Pensnett. A touch which would be not unusual in some parts of the world but decidedly idiosyncratic in the English Midlands.
The site’s significance is also marked in more secular fashion with Dudley Council having declared Barrow Hill and its green post-industrial surroundings a local nature reserve in 2005. The council states that Barrow Hill is amongst the borough’s largest and most nature rich expanses of grassland. Its ponds – a legacy of mining and quarrying in the area – woodland and meadows support a rich array of plant, insect and animal life, less and hour’s walk from Dudley town centre.
The Walk
Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the gpx. 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 Gornal via Barrow Hill begins at Dudley Bus Station.
Overlooking Dudley Castle, Dudley bus station is a major Black Country transport hub.
From the bus station take the left hand exit towards Dudley’s market square.
Walk a short way along the road towards the yellow shop front of a branch of Heron Foods, and a crimson painted pub called The Castle.
Opposite these buildings turn left and walk into Dudley’s characterful marketplace which is very much the heart of the town.
If Wolverhampton is the undisputed capital of the Black Country then Dudley vies with Walsall to be the second city. Whilst the overall population of Dudley Borough is well over 300,000 the town itself can claim around 100,000. This gives it the feel of a large market town, which in many ways it is.
In the centre around the marketplace especially, Dudley’s heroic period as a cradle of industry in the 18th and 19th Centuries, as well as it’s genuine affluence in the 20th Century prior to the 1970s is visible everywhere making for interesting sightseeing.
It also has a curiously seaside, or holiday resort feel for a town that is roughly 70 miles from the sea. There is the old fashioned sweetshop Teddy Gray’s whose products are manufactured in the town through processes which haven’t changed since prior to the Second World War. There’s also the impressively well preserved castle on it’s hilltop, accessed from the town centre by a ski lift and a zoo. The zoo possesses internationally renowned animal pens by the libertarian communist architect, and Soviet emigre, Berthold Lubetkin who built similar modernist structures in the late 1930s for London Zoo.
Leaving the marketplace behind, you head uphill along Dudley High Street.
At the top, having crossed over several intersecting roads stands the so-called “top church” of St. Thomas and St. Luke.
Passing the church you reach the brow of the hill.
Continue walking as the road begins sloping downhill past a branch of ASDA on your right hand side.
After some distance heading downhill you pass a major interchange. Here there is a pub called The Lamp Tavern on your left.
Continuing down the hill you are rewarded with an excellent view across Worcestershire to the south and Shropshire to the north, across the little slither of southern Staffordshire that lies due west of Dudley.
A little further you come to a major road called Wellington Road, which off to your right uphill towards a set of council built high rise tower blocks.
Turn right and walk uphill towards these tower blocks.
Along the way you pass a small gurdwara named after Guru Nanak Singh Sabha on your right.
A little way after the gurdwara, turn left and walk a short distance along Maughan Street.
Here you cross over the road next to a small roundabout.
Then carry on straight down Russells Hall Road past some 1960s vintage flats and houses and patches of grassy parkland
Keep on walking along Russells Hall Road for a considerable distance.
This entire section of the walk consists of estates of houses built between the 1950s and mid-1970s, with an interesting array of post-war suburban housing styles, as well as other public buildings such as schools and a Co-op supermarket in a building that may once have been a pub or a working men’s club.
Presently you reach the end of Russells Hall Road.
Here, turn left and walk uphill for some distance.
You are still in an estate of houses and low rise flats which look like they were constructed in the late 1960s or early 1970s.
In the distance the chimneys of Dudley’s massive Russell Hall Hospital are visible on the horizon, whilst to the left you can see the flats you passed near on the edge of the town centre, on top of their hill.
Towards the top of the hill there is a snicket on your right hand side.
Walk down this snicket and past a metal device put in place to stop motorbikes and other vehicles.
Behind this there stands a junction where footpaths go off in several directions.
Turn left and walk a little way uphill.
Soon the path forks, with the smaller branch on the right running steeply uphill.
Take this smaller steeper branch on the right uphill.
This path runs through a thicket of trees partway up the side of Barrow Hill.
Barrow Hill is the surviving core of a prehistoric volcano, extinct for hundreds of millions of years. It’s tough rocks, which are of a similar vintage to those that comprise the Malvern and Abberley Hills south west of Dudley, have survived erosion much better than the newer softer rocks which surround them.
Leaving the trees the path slopes steadily downhill.
The landscape in this area on the edge of Dudley is unusual and striking. There is something of a wild timeless quality to it, as if you could just as easily round a corner and happen-upon: medieval outlaws “on the country”, a defeated Early Modern monarch escaping justice, Victorian workers tramping to and from a mine or a quarry, or twockers in the 1980s or 1990s setting alight the latest vehicle they have taken for a joyride.
Near the bottom of the hill you enter woodland again.
Turn right here and head down a green lane.
Keep on going straight, and soon you reach a small pool of water surrounded by trees on your left and a set of electricity pylons straight ahead.
Head along the path towards the pylons.
There is a fence line and a gateway just before you reach them.
Then head along the path on the path beside one of the legs of the pylons.
Beyond the pylons you pass through a gate onto a short residential cul-de-sac.
Walk to the end of the cul-de-sac.
Here there is a main road.
On the far side of the main road there is a row of new red brick houses looking out onto the paddocks and heathland on the edge of the West Midlands conurbation.
Walk along this road as it slopes gently uphill.
Near the top of the hill stands The Forge pub, a reminder of how industrialised the area once was.
Having passed the pub, carry on downhill.
The road was fairly quiet when I walked the route and there are reasonable grass verges most of the way along, but it is worth taking care.
Presently you pass a cemetery on your right.
Shortly after walking past the cemetery you reach a main road.
Cross over the main road and walk up a residential road called Guys Lane.
The road slopes steadily uphill.
After five to ten minutes walking you reach B4176, Dudley Road.
Upon reaching the Dudley Road, wait to cross, and head up the residential road immediately opposite.
Soon you turn right and reach the road which leads past an old Banks brewery pub into Gornalwood village centre.
On reaching central Gornalwood this is where the walk ends.
Getting Back
At the time of writing in January 2026 Gornalwood was well served by buses to both destinations across the Black Country and into central Birmingham. The X10, which is half hourly on weekdays and Saturdays, runs to Colmore Row in Birmingham city centre via Merry Hill, Halesowen, Bearwood and Edgbaston. The frequent 17 and 27 buses serve Dudley and Stourbridge and Dudley and Wolverhampton, hourly in each direction throughout the week. While the less frequent 223 ran to Bilston which is on the West Midlands Metro line on all days of the week apart from Sunday.