Tern Valley East Walk, Shropshire – A Peaceful Weekend Route for Families

Where are the children?

Saturday 9th November. This weekend is Remembrance weekend. Every year, the local Scout group, from Cubs upwards, spend the weekend at the Scout Hut, with activities on the Saturday, a sleepover, then joining the Remembrance Day Parade through Market Drayton town on the Sunday morning. My eldest has done this for several years now, but up until September, my youngest was still in Beavers, and the younger groups just join in with the parade on Sunday morning and don’t do the sleepover. This year my youngest has moved up to Cubs and so was now allowed to join for the full weekend.

This meant that my husband and I had a child free Saturday, and since the boys were due to be dropped off early on the Saturday morning, we thought we’d make the most of it and had planned a longer than usual walk to do over the Welsh border.

Unfortunately, my husband woke up on Saturday morning absolutely full of cold. We got the children dropped off, then instead of heading to Llangollen, we went back home instead. However, after seeing me walk a few weeks ago with a cold, he knew that a walk would do him good, but he didn’t want to commit to a long walk, so he suggested a gentle wander up the canal. We opted for the Tern Valley East walk, a popular walk for us, and one that I’d previously blogged about with the children during the summer.

Everything’s drained!

Now, being a regular walk of ours, and having only walked some of it last week and written about the canal section here in this post, I wasn’t planning on sharing this walk, but we discovered something fascinating today! Well, fascinating for me, having been an engineer for 15 years, and for my husband, who’s currently studying his HNC in site management. His last module was about culverts and cofferdams so imagine his excitement when he saw this… What a shame it was too late to use in his assignment!

It turns out that the work we had suspected was going to take place (after seeing a Welfare unit on the roadside nearby, and scaffolding poles by a lock last week) actually included a big section of the canal being drained! Along this first section we could see areas of the bank had been reinforced and built back up.

The work went on for several locks, but it was this lock that was particularly interesting with all the scaffolding poles. We found it fascinating to see the canal drained, and actually it wasn’t as deep as we had expected it to be!

Our postman had mentioned a narrow boat had gotten stuck in a lock due to an issue with something, so I’m guessing this was the lock! We had seen a pile of scaffolding poles here on last weekends walk and wondered what they were for – now we know!

Check this out: Photos from last weekends walk, and how it was this weekend! You can also see the difference between lovely DSLR photos (last week) against the phone camera (this week!)

And that’s a wrap. We came off at the same place as we had last weekend, but instead of going through Peatswood, we walked home via the town, then along a less than exciting stretch of the A529 and through a field full of elephant grass, following the designated Tern Valley East walk route.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing in an unusual peace. It is amazing that, even though it doesn’t stop you from feeling poorly, a walk out in the fresh air really does help you feel better in some way.

I wasn’t planning on writing about this walk as it wasn’t something new, or something we hadn’t walked for a long time, but since a drained canal is pretty unusual (from my experience, anyway) I thought it might be an interesting post to share, along with a handful of (the hundreds of) photos I took, for any other canal enthusiasts or engineers out there 😊

So, whilst we didn’t get to have our child free long hike, had my husband not been poorly, we would probably never have seen a drained canal, as I don’t know how long it’ll be like this! It is, however, a shame that the boys missed this, I think they’d have been fascinated! Perhaps we will walk up here again this coming weekend and see if it is still drained; I have no idea how long work like this takes…

TOTAL MILES: 5.08 | TOTAL TIME: 1h51 (1h38 Moving Time)

Good to Know

Car Parking: Market Drayton swimming baths (1).

Toilets: At the carpark (there may be a charge, I’m not sure).

Accessibility: Not suitable for pushchairs.

Café/Picnic Spots: A handful of picnic benches and benches along the towpath between Tyrley Locks and Market Drayton. Cafes in the town (Joules pub and Jones’s coffee shop are just off the route and have good food, drinks and toilets!)

Terrain: Mostly flat with a few short hills and one flight of steep steps.

Family-Friendly Tips: The towpath is a great walk for children. There is a lot to see along the Market Drayton to Tyrley stretch, with many boaters happy to “show the ropes” or even allow the children to help them with the lock gates!

Points of Interest: A heron and kingfisher hide along the canal, along with plenty of ducks and swans.

Safety Information: Some parts of the towpath are narrow and slippery. Wellies or sturdy walking boots are advised. A section walks along the A529, there is a footpath.