You could spend a lot of time following old canals and railways in the Erewash Valley. This walk included parts of the Erewash Canal, the Nottingham Canal, the Nutbrook Canal, and the Stanton branch line, and I could have continued further along any one of those, if I'd had the time.
I started in Kirk Hallam, which is mostly a post-war housing estate with a distinctive outline on the map: the main road to Ilkeston through the middle, and a loop road encircling the village. It looks like the London Underground logo. I parked at the lake at the top of the loop.
There was a sculpture commemorating the nearby Stanton Ironworks - the ground remembers the roar of the blast read the inscription around the base - and the remains of a lock on the Nutbrook Canal.
Heading towards Ilkeston, I crossed a former golf course, now a nature reserve called Pewit Coronation Meadows, passed a large sports centre, and was soon in the town centre. There was a general impression of red-brickiness, with lots of solid Edwardian buildings including the URC church, the old police station, and the Carnegie library.
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| URC church |
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| Old police station |
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| library and war memorial |
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| shops |
St Mary's Church overlooks the market place. The door, with its branching hinges and kings' heads, was locked. So I wandered down Bath Street to find Ilkeston's number one tourist attraction - the famous Hole in the Wall. This iconic piece of architecture was boosted up the TripAdvisor ratings a few years ago with a campaign by Radio Derby.
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| St Mary's and market place |
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| beautiful door |
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| hole in the wall |
There are places of more actual interest: the Scala Cinema, built in 1913 and still showing films; and the small but informative Erewash Museum, which was closed today but I've visited before.
The Erewash Valley Trail was well signposted. I crossed the Erewash Canal, the River Erewash, the railway, and the Nottingham Canal, and reached the village of Cossall. Although I'm working my way towards Eastwood, where I hope to visit the D.H. Lawrence museum, I hadn't realised that Cossall had links to the author as well. His fiancée lived in the cottage next to the church.
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| leaky lock on the Ilkeston Canal |
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| D.H. Lawrence info in Cossall |
The almshouses were undergoing wholesale renovation, and St Catherine's church was closed, but there was a dry bench in the little porch where I ate a sandwich. The graveyard had a memorial to some local men who died in the Battle of Waterloo.
I followed the line of the Nottingham Canal southward to Trowell. At first there was water, then mostly reeds, then the wateriness came to an abrupt stop with a car park built on top of it, and a wooded hump where the daffodils were starting to come out.
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| former swing bridge |
For the rest of the way to Trowell, a footpath and a bridle path ran side by side, sometimes separated by a residual bit of hedge. I'd noticed a sign at Kirk Hallam that said the Nutbrook Canal towpath had been strictly private. Perhaps that was also the case on this canal, and a public footpath developed alongside the towpath.
Trowell seemed to consist of a road junction and not much else. There is a garden centre a bit further down the canal (well, a name like Trowell would be wasted without a garden centre) and Trowell Services on the M1, but I didn't see either of those today. St Helen's church had obviously been much altered over the centuries, and scaffolding around the tower suggested that repairs were continuing.
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| blocked door, several types of stonework |
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| blocked arch replaced with a window |
The Boards was a raised footpath across the flood plain and back to the Erewash Canal. I debated going straight on, decided the canal would be more scenic, followed it down to Stanton Lock to join the Nutbrook Trail, and discovered the trail was closed for a short distance because of redevelopment on the Stanton Ironworks site. I very rarely have to retrace my steps, but this was one of those times.
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| Stanton Ironworks site |
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| lots of moss or lichen on the old railway line |
Slightly miffed, I returned to the lock and ate the rest of my lunch next to one of the gates. Then I walked back up the canal and through an industrial estate. There was an unexpected church, built for the workers at Stanton Ironworks, and the air smelled variously of wooden planks, plastic, and diesel. A crane was picking up vast handfuls of tin cans and dropping them into a container.
The Nutbrook Trail followed the route of the old Stanton branch line railway. I stuck with it for a bit, then got bored and diverted onto the Nutbrook Canal towpath instead, eventually coming out at the edge of Kirk Hallam.
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| Nutbrook Trail |
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| bike blockade on towpath |
All Saints Church is about 600 years older than the rest of Kirk Hallam. It, too, was closed - I hadn't encountered a single open church today. The graveyard had views back towards Ilkeston, and a short wiggle through the housing estate took me back to the lake where I was parked.
Kirk Hallam-Ilkeston-Cossall-Trowell 2 February 2026
11 miles / 18 km
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