Distance: 9.8 miles
Difficulty of the terrain: medium
Get the route via: Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox
Walk from the centre of Walsall into former mining country along the McClean Way greenway, and across the remarkable surivivals that are Pelsall and Pelsall North Common, before crossing the Staffordshire countryside to reach Cannock.
The Story
The Walk
Getting Back
Common, but a rare survival
Lying just above the large village of Pelsall in the far north west of Walsall Borough, Pelsall Common and Pelsall North Common are very rare surviving scraps of common land inside West Midlands county.
Largely situated north of the Wyrley and Essington Canal, Pelsall North Common is designated a Local Nature Reserve (LNR) and Site of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINC). While the whole site is a remarkable survival on the edge of the West Midlands conurbation of the historical chase land that once covered south east Staffordshire. The upland area known as Cannock Chase is the most substantial survival of this landscape, but in lower lying areas a few scraps like Pelsall’s commons cling on.
Pelsall North Common comprises wild grassland, knots of trees and woodland, and pools of water. It is a very long time since it was used for any substantial form of agriculture or mineral extraction. Since 1990 it has been part of the Forest of Mercia.
The smaller Pelsall Common is an open grassy area, generally far more kempt in character, like a municipal park, situated in the heart of the village, with houses, shops, pubs and other amenities surrounding it.
Earlier enclosures of the Pelsall North Common where land was taken from the commonly held area for private use have occasionally been unwound. Pelsall Ironworks was constructed in the 1820s and closed as an iron manufactory in the 1880s with parts of the site used for other industrial purposes for a further 40 years until the 1920s. Post disuse the land came to be reincorporated back into Pelsall North Common.
Another post-industrial relic, still partially in use, on the common land is the Cannock Extension Canal. A canal which once ran from the Wyrley and Essington Canal at Pelsall north to Cannock but is now only in use as far as the southern edge of the ex-south Staffordshire pit village of Norton Canes which lies beneath the Chasewater Reservoir another artefact of the industrial age surrounded by fragments of pre-modern chase and healthland.
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 from Walsall to Cannock via Pelsall Common and Pelsall North Common begins from Park Street, the stretch of high street in front of Walsall Railway Station.
Immediately opposite the entrance to the Saddlers Shopping Centre, which stands above Walsall Railway Station, is Butlers Passage.
Walk straight ahead down Butlers Passage which leads to Walsall Bus Station.
At the bus station keep on walking straight ahead, keeping to the left, walking along Hatherton Road which leads past a JobCentre and several offices of the local council towards the edge of Walsall town centre.
Presently you come to where Hatherton Street branches off Hatherton Road running to the left, beside a set of traffic lights.
Here turn left and begin walking along Hatherton Street.
Soon you reach the A4148 dual carriageway. Cross straight over and keep on walking down Hatherton Street on the opposite side of the road.
You soon enter a residential area. At the bottom of Hatherton Street, slightly off to the right on the other side of the road, there is a road lined with late Victorian terraced houses, called Cecil Street. Cross the road here, and turn left onto Cecil Street.
Keep on walking down Cecil Street for some distance.
Soon you come to a t-junction. Here take the left hand arm and keep walking, following the road.
As you head down hill off to the right there is a gateway leading onto a scrubby, wooded; patch of ground next to a cemetery. Turn right through this gateway. This is National Cycle Route Five, which north of Walsall is known as the McClean Way, a recently opened and improved cycleway along the route of the former South Staffordshire Railway, which will eventually link Walsall and Lichfield.
Once on the McClean Way turn left and follow the path as it passes close to the side of Walsall’s Ryecroft Cemetery.
Past the Cemetery the well surfaced route runs dead straight for several miles towards Pelsall, a former industrial village a couple of miles north of Walsall.
You walk along the McClean Way making good time for several miles towards Pesall. The flow of your steps only occasionally being broken by the roads that cut across the path here and there.
The landscape is a mixture of houses from various eras, some pretty new, some built during the interwar period, mixed up with distinctly rural sections.
Just after crossing a road bridge the embankment levels out and you reach a turning point on the left where you can exit the former railway path into central Pelsall.
After leaving the railway path, turn left up a snicket to reach Pelsall Common in the heart of Pelsall.
Follow the path straight across the common.
On the far side having crossed two main roads you pick up a snicket on the right and pick your way along a series of snickers and roads through Pelsall’s north western suburbs.
Nearing the edge of the village you cross a main road and turn left along a residential road beside a convenience shop.
Soon you approach the Wyrley and Essington Canal and reach Pelsall North Common.
Cross the bridge over the canal to reach the heart of the common.
Once on the far side of the canal turn left and follow a wide well path through the scrubby woodland along the western flank of the common. This path comprises part of the Forest of Mercia Trail.
Presently having passed a series of pools, likely the remains of historic mining, you reach Fishley Lane which is on the boundary between West Midlands county and Staffordshire.
Cross the lane and head left along a driveway past a rurally situated social club and a cat and dog kennels.
Just past the kennels the tarmac ends and you pick-up a well worn path through the trees.
Follow this path, which is called Cadman’s Lane, for quite some distance.
At wetter times of year the path can be quite hard to follow because it runs beside the Wash Brook. At these points it is possible, taking care to avoid the barbed wire on the fence, to walk through the field to the left of the path before returning to the path in drier places.
Around halfway down Cadman’s Lane the path does head off to the left into fields, until you reach the point where you cross the Wash Brook.
Presently, after some further distance, still paralleling the Wash Brook you reach a large field off to the left.
Here you leave the trees and walk around the edge of the field on the right.
At the top of the field you step out onto a road.
Taking care, cross the road and follow the lane immediately in front of you, past the site of a demolished coal mine, now partly replaced with a new housing estate, and past a scattering of houses to reach the edge of the large ex-pit village of Great Wyrley.
Just after reaching the bulk of Great Wyrley you arrive at the edge of the A34. Upon reaching the road turn right.
Follow the A34 for quite some distance through Great Wyrley approaching Cannock.
Presently you reach a complicated raised section of road which you follow up and over the M6 Toll approaching the ring of retail and business parks which line the edge of Cannock.
On the far side of the M6 Toll follow the road around the edge of the retail parks to the left.
Opposite a pub cross the road and then turn right following a dual carriageway section of the A460 uphill past a railway freight depot.
After some distance you reach a road which runs steeply downhill to the left towards Cannock town centre.
At the bottom of the hill you reach Cannock Railway Station.
To reach the town centre, which is where the bus station lies, continue straight ahead and cross the A34 by means of a subway to reach central Cannock.
This is where the walk ends.
Getting Back
At the time of writing (March 2026) Cannock was served by two trains per hour along the Chase Line on weekdays and Saturdays. These ran south via Walsall to Birmingham and north via Hesnesford to Rugeley Trent Valley from where there were services both north and south along the West Coast Mainlines’ Trent Valley section. The service was at an hourly frequency on Sundays. Cannock also had a very frequent bus service in the form of the X51 via the northern suburbs of Walsall, Walsall town centre and north west Birmingham to central Birmingham. Cannock was also served by numerous buses to destinations like Lichfield across Staffordshire and the north east of West Midlands county.