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Stroud to Pike Lock
Route facts
Waterways:
Stroudwater Navigation »
Distance: 3.11 miles / 5 km
Duration: 2.5 hours
Difficulty: Energetic
Starts at: Pike Lock Car Park
Ends at: Pike Lock Car Park
A marvellous chance to walk a canal that is steadily coming back to life. From the bustle of the centre of Stroud to the peaceful isolation of Westfield Lock with the outward journey done by bus.
Take the bus into Stroud and alight at the Merrywalks stop. Walk down the road, under the Brunel Railway Viaduct, across the big road junction to Bath Road. The line of the canal is across here, so to your left you could explore the beginning of the Thames & Severn Canal. For this walk turn right through a gap in the wall to the start of the canal, a small waterfall where the water begins. From here it is much of a voyage of discovery as work proceeds along the way with restoration and adjacent works. The river Frome runs along much of the same course as the canal and at one point the tow path is a causeway between the two.
Ebley Mill makes a handsome landmark on the walk and you then reach Ryeford Locks, one of the two staircase pairs on the canal with their isolated lock cottage. Then at Ryeford a private swingbridge takes the long distance Cotswolds Way over the canal. Beyond here the restoration work is a much easier proposition with much of the canal already in water. Beyond the delightfully named Nutshell Bridge is a wide expanse of water know as the Ocean. The Birmingham to Bristol main railway line must be negotiated next before Bond's Mill where there is the first plastic lift bridge! This length is in water as far as the other side of Pike Lock. The towpath crosses Roving Bridge and past Blunder lock, apparently so named because of a miscalculation in the water levels.
The new bridge at Pike Lock was opened in September 2005, here you can go under the road on a steep and narrow flight of steps and on to the next lock. This has also been rebuilt and the towpath side has another flight of tiny steps from a small landing place at bottom of lock for a boat crew to land for the lock. The towpath then goes as far as the elaborate circular run off and over the embanked end of the canal. Here you can walk the few yards to the next bridge, in a field, which was saved from demolition by one woman's determined sit in.
Getting there
Parking: Small canal side car park by Pike lock, turn left off the road between the A419 roundabout and Eastington, just before the canal.
Public transport: Bus no. 20 at 30 minutes past the hour from the stop near Pike Lock.
