River Rea; Cartland Road – Dacer Close

Another section of the River Rea for this blog post, this time in reverse. I started my walk at the Cartload Road entrance to Hazelwell Park and walked along the River back up towards Lifford. The route here is tarmacked and suitable for cyclists, walkers, wheelchair users, roller bladers.. whoever!

This is a family friendly park; there is a play area, benches and goal posts for playing football. There is also a large expanse of grass for running about on. The path follows the river, and there are walkways coming off it, leading to residential areas, play areas and roads.

Continuing along the route, which is still National Cycle Route 5, there are some minor roads to be crossed – King’s Norton has a strong industrial background and the rear of Stirchley high street is dotted with warehouses. The first road is Hazelwell Road. If you bear right and carry on up the road, you come out on Stirchley High Street by the school. To carry on along the river, look out for the sign post and information panel (number 4).

The river is now on your left. This stretch of the route is quite short. It takes you along the back of what could well be a new Asda development. You then come out on Fordhouse Lane. Turning left here would take you towards Kings Heath. This is a busy road and a main bus route – please use the crossing if you are continuing the walk.

The people who sort out these routes do like their marker posts:

The walk along here is also quite short, and it seems as though the river just disappears and the path becomes a cul-de-sac with minimal sign posts. When you come out onto Dacer Close, turning right would take you back to Fordhouse Lane. If you keep to the left and walk up the hill, you will see signs for NCR5 and after a short distance you end up on the canal towpath!

This was quite a pleasant walk to do after work on a Sunday morning, and I didn’t quite expect the canal to be there – I didn’t expect to just walk onto it, literally. The walk along the canal shall be part of another post at a later date.

There are not many bins along the route, please take rubbish and dog waste with you. Please use crossings at road junctions and be aware of sharing the path with cyclists, joggers etc.

L x


Bonus pics:

All pics were taken by me on June 24th. They are up on Flickr - click for bigger.