Distance: 3.7 miles
Difficulty of the terrain: medium
Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox
Walk between Dudley and Oldbury town centres along the crest of the Rowley Hills including Turner’s Hill the tallest hill in West Midlands county.
The Story
Route Notes
Getting Back
“The Black Country’s Limestone Heart”
Rising on the southern edge of Dudley town centre and finishing with a crescendo at the sharp south end of Turner’s Hill, West Midlands county’s highest point, the Rowley Hills are the dominant landscape feature of the Black Country. They have been described as the region’s “limestone heart” by the former Wolverhampton Poet Laureate Emma Purshouse.
Standing consistently 260 metres above sea level, and 271 metres above sea level at the summit of Turner’s Hill, the Rowley Hills are the highest point of the Midlands Watershed Ridge inside West Midlands county. Albeit still a fair bit lower than the ridge’s highest points in the Waseley and Lickey Hills just south of Birmingham. This said, the Rowley Hills are over 30 metres higher than the next highest peak in West Midlands County, Sedgley Beacon in the north of Dudley Borough, and more than 40 metres taller than Barr Beacon the tallest point in the county’s northern reaches. The Rowley Hills are very prominent from points right across West Midlands county as well as from hills out in north Worcestershire like the Clent Hills and Wychbury Hill. Purportedly they can even be seen from the south of the county and the far west of the Warwickshire Cotswolds, from the Malverns, Bredon Hill and Meon Hill.
For much of their history the Rowley Hills, perhaps not entirely nonsensically given how hilly the south of that county is, were an exclave of Shropshire, like Halesowen was. Their legally complex past perhaps explains why they are so heavily developed. The hills are covered with 20th Century housing estates, with the exception of the park on the side of Beacon Hill, the BIrmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust reserve at Portway Hill and Sandwell Council’s Warrens Hall local nature reserve on the site of the old Windmill End colliery which closed in 1929, at the bottom of the hill’s western slope. Discounting the greensward of Dudley Golf Club on Turner’s Hill and the fenced off gashes where rock was quarried.
There was an active quarry on Turner’s Hill up until 2010 from which dolerite (known locally as Rowley Rag) was extracted. This distinctive material, vulcanised limestone formed hundreds of millions of years ago, when volcanic activity super heated the western Black Country’s limestone, was used by the Victorians as kerb stones. They also found other uses for it or at least tried to. Chance’s Glassworks on the eastern edge of Oldbury experimented with heating dolerite to try and turn it into a decorative material capable of being polished. The experiment worked, creating a substance not unlike the Whitby jet that the mid-Victorian era loved. However, it required so much fuel and working to produce that it was never economical. Supposedly though, there was a staircase in their factory, which now lies ruined in the lee of the raised section of the M5 that cleaves Oldbury from Smethwick. From the factory’s ruins the Rowley Hills stand proud, due north, dominating the horizon.
Route Notes
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 between Dudley and Oldbury town centres along the crest of the Rowley Hills including Turner’s Hill the tallest hill in West Midlands county, begins from central Dudley’s public transport interchange.
Head south from the interchange leaving Dudley town centre and cross the bridge over the busy A461 which runs up a pass where the Midlands Watershed Ridge, of which the Rowley Hills are a part, dips to a relatively low level.
On the far side of the A461 start ascending the road into Dudley’s southern suburbs climbing into the Rowley Hills.
Passing a bus stop in Kates Hill turn left heading up into an interestingly designed 1970s estate, consisted around a primary school and built into the side of Kates Hill itself the 253 metre tall northern most peak in the Rowley Hills.
Here on the right as you approach the top of the hill head up a footpath past a series of bungalows.
Presently near the top of Kates Hill you descend back down to the main road which runs along the top of the ridge.
Continue along this road which is lined primarily with large detached houses, heading up higher into the Rowley Hills.
On both sides you occasionally get glimpses of un, or underdeveloped parts of the hills with views to the right out into the Worcestershire countryside towards Clent, and the River Severn basin and to the left into the Trent basin and the heart of the Black Country.
Crossing Cawney Hill, the lowest of the Rowley Hills, standing 237 metres above sea level, you imperceptibly pass over the Netherton Tunnel (the UK’s longest canal tunnel) and move from Dudley Borough into Sandwell.
Soon you turn left along the 1970s detached house lined Darbys Hill Road. Soon you pass the summit of Darbys Hill which at 270 metres above sea level is the second tallest in West Midlands county. The very top of the hill is an unkempt park of sorts, and besides an enclosure containing a radiomast is fairly accessible.
Presently Darbys Hill Road ends on the north western edge of the Grace Mary estate, and you return to the main road which runs just below the summit of Turner’s Hill.
The very top of Turner’s Hill like Darbys Hill is open grass, trees and scrub land, but enclosed to control access to two large radio transmitters.
From Turner’s Hill you follow the road as it runs steeply down the green eastern flank of the Rowley Hills towards Rowley Regis at the southern base of the range. On the way you pass an ancient looking cottage surrounded by green pasture.
At the bottom of the hill you turn left, walking along a road lined with interwar era houses, past the Lion Farm estate with its smattering of high rise blocks.
Soon you reach the Wolverhampton road which you cross, approaching Oldbury town centre.
Once on the other side of the road turn right, then quickly left onto a road which runs through an industrial estate, including a Sandwell Council household waste collection centre.
After some distance the road emerges onto the side of the A4034 running into Oldbury town centre.
Turn left here and begin walking along the side of the road towards central Oldbury.
Opposite a McDonald’s drive thru cross the road, turn slightly to the right then carry on right past a series of bus stops and a big Sainsbury’s supermarket surrounded by acres of parking (when it was opened in 1980 the shop was an early Sainsbury’s SavaCentre).
Passing Sainsbury’s carry on past Sandwell Council House straight along the road through the centre of Oldbury.
This is where the Walk ends.
Getting Back
Oldbury is fairly well served by public transport. Sandwell and Dudley Station stands on the western edge of the town centre with frequent trains south east towards Birmingham, and beyond, and north west across the Black Country towards Wolverhampton, Telford, Shrewsbury and further afield into Wales, Staffordshire, North West England and Scotland. There are also frequent buses to destinations across the Black Country and towards Birmingham city centre via Smethwick and Bearwood.