Please use the OS Landranger 139 and Explorer 219 maps to easily find these cycle-walkways, as I like to call them.
Dowery Dell Trail
8 Kms Halesowen to Longbridge Railway as an adventure (rough) walk and, for most of the way, is unofficially possible to walk but is not legal. The precedent has been set by children and youngsters since the line was opened as a single-track railway in 1883. Walked in many parts ever since. But how can we make it official with the permission of the landowners or, through compulsory purchase by the local authorities and the Combined Authority?
The 600 metre section from Hunnington Blue Bird Park, via the cricket ground opposite, to the farmer Cherry memorial bench is legal and official on a cul de sac public right of way next to the trackbed. Permissive path round the cricket ground. The rest of the route on the trackbed to the M5 subway public right of way is not but has always been walked for 137 years. From the subway to Longbridge it is all public right of way on tarmac.
22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway
All official and legal and marked on the OS Explorer map as a traffic-free cycle route - but a mudbath in places when wet weather arrives!
Includes parts of S Staffordshire Walkway, Monarch's Way and Valley Parkway.
From Fens Pool Avenue, Brierley Hill to Aldersley Stadium and on to the canal towpath in NW Wolverhampton; on two railway lines. Through the heart of the Black Country boroughs of Dudley and Wolverhampton, via rural South Staffordshire District Council and Wombourne.
It is on two railway lines, with two stations as tea rooms in Wolverhampton.
MY PROPOSAL for BMC regional and national approval and action:
All dismantled/disused railway lines to be brought back into use, where practicable - for trains and, more likely, for walking, cycling and horseback, in the new normal and, essential normal, of lower finite fossil fuel use. Also Stratford to Honeybourne Railway and 120 Kms Black Country Railway finished.
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