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Start: Shipley Country Park Visitor Centre Car Park

A walk through Shipley’s restored coal mining landscape, once part of the Miller Mundy family estate. Former opencast sites have been transformed into a country park full of wildlife, woodlands, views and historic features. For more on Shipley’s history, visit the displays at the Visitor Centre.

1. Leave the car park on the track to the right of the disabled bays. After 15 metres turn right onto the tarmac road (take care). Continue past the Visitor Centre with the wildlife garden on your left. Go through the gate, keep right at the fork through the metal gate and follow the hedge on your right.
2. When the path bends, go through the metal gate on your right and climb uphill beside the fence, passing through two more gates.
   This area was opencast mined from 2008–2017. Now owned by the Woodland Trust, it is being planted as the UK’s first Young People’s Forest, with 250,000 trees.
   At the fence corner, turn left and follow the boundary to the next gate. Go through and keep ahead with the fence on your right.
3. Go through the next gate and turn left uphill with the fence on your left.
   Look left to Home Farm, stretches of Shipley woodland and Mapperley village.
   At the next gate continue onto the stone track. Cross straight over the junction into the field, follow the fence right, then head towards the copse. Look for a squeeze stile among the trees.
4. Cross the stile and climb uphill slightly right to another stile beside the copse. Continue uphill with the hedge on your left and cross the next stile. Follow the wide stone path to reach the path junction behind houses.
5. Go through the metal gate, turn left through the second, and follow the track behind the houses. Pass through the gateposts into the fields. Keep the hedge on your right, then right again at the corner. Continue through field gaps, then with the hedge on your left. At the end of the hedge enter the open field and bear diagonally right downhill to the small woodland.
6. Cross the stile into the area around Smalley Dam. Leave through the gate and turn left onto Bell Lane. Follow this long bridleway for 2 km past Smalley Lodge and Manchester Wood, then down into Shipley Country Park.
   The estate was heavily opencast from 1970–74, then reshaped and planted before reopening as a country park in 1976.
7. Turn right through the pedestrian gate into John Wood. Continue through the conifers and turn right at the T junction. Cross the footbridge and curve left. At the next junction turn right into Square Wood. Follow the path for 700 m with Mapperley Reservoir on your left until you reach the road (beware of traffic).
   Mapperley Reservoir was built in the 1820s to supply water to the Nutbrook Canal.
8. Turn left to walk across the reservoir dam. Pass the car park and continue up the road for 450 m. Turn right into the woodland and take the left hand fork uphill towards the Water Tower.
   Home Farm and the Water Tower are remnants of the Miller Mundy estate. Shipley Hall once stood here; its gardens and arboretum still survive in the landscape. The hall was demolished in 1948 after mining related subsidence.
9. Continue to join the surfaced Beech Walk and follow it past large beech trees behind the Water Tower. Continue towards the former hall site, then turn left and zig zag downhill to the old coach road. Turn left towards Derby Lodge.
10. Turn right along Shipley Lane. After 50 metres turn left through the field gate. Head uphill just left of the two large trees on the skyline, then bear right to a squeeze stile. Through the stile, bear left to reach the surfaced path. Follow it with the plantation on your right, then around to the right to return to the Visitor Centre.

Disclaimer

Please note that the council update these leaflets on a periodic rolling basis and that some landmark information may have changed. The footpaths should remain in place and be signposted and be clearly marked on the Ordnance Survey maps. Please report problems you may find so that these can be investigated to tourism@ambervalley.gov.uk.