Walking the Birmingham Canal Navigations

The schematic map below has Wolverhampton (WVH) on the bottom left, Brownhills and Walsall (BHL and WSL) in the top middle and Birmingham (BHM) on the bottom right. The map shows a simplified view of the canals in this area. These canals form the "Birmingham Canal Navigations" (BCN). In 2018 I walked the Birmingham Main Line. This is the bit of the BCN that goes from Birmingham to Wolverhampton: on the map below it's the bit from GSB through OTJ, PGJ and HFJ to WVH. (There's an index to these abbreviated place names at the bottom of this web page.)

In April 2019, I walked most of the other canals of the BCN. For help about the BCN, I looked at the Pearson's Canal Companion for the "Stourport Ring" as this has lots of details about the BCN. The numbers on the map below refer to the map numbers in the Pearson's guide.

                      NC                AB
                       |                 |
                       |37               |37
                       |                 |
                       |                 |OJ
                       |                 |
                       |   37            |   37   38   39
                ------------------------------------------DB
                |     PJ       BHL      CJ               |
              37|                                        |39
                |                                        |      39       40
                |                                       RJ----------------------------------
              36|              WSL                       |                                |
                |               |                        |39                              |20
                |  36           |  41   W   41  TVJ  41  |                                |
              BJ------------------------------------------                                |
             36/               WJ                 \                                       |SaJ
              /                                    \9                                         
          SnJ/                                      \                   |20      BHM            
            /                                     RGJ\----SV            |                     
         35/                                          \                 |GSB                    
          /    7                8            9         \    9     10    |                 
7-----------------------------------------------------------------------|OTJ             
  WVH   HFJ                                            PGJ              |               
                                                                        11

I started at HFJ (near Wolverhampton). I then walked from HFJ to BJ, then went clockwise around the rectangle visiting the arms to NC, AB and WSL (Walsall) on the way. After I got back to BJ, I did the canals from RJ to SaJ and from TVJ to PGJ.

Here is an index to the abbreviations used on the map for the names of places. The postcodes are only approximate. Each Google Map link goes to the postcode in Google Maps.

Link to the index page that has links to other holidays