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[1] Leave the leisure centre and turn right immediately into Selstead Road. Walk down the road a short distance and turn right into Painswick Park. This park incorporates a mound which is a former landfill site grassed over.Some rare plants grow there , including spotted orchids. As you enter the Park, you can see an information board just before the children's play area. Passing the play area on your left, walk ahead, passing the fishing pond on your left. Take the path left and keep ahead (avoiding a left turn down to the pond). A short distance ahead is an exit. Don’t take the exit, but turn left and with a line of tall conifers on your right, carry on ahead. Keep to the tarmac path, pass the picnic benches, then pass the skate board enclosure on your right, then at the t-junction, turn right.
[2] The tarmac path now skirts the edge of the playing fields to the exit on Thorley Lane. Don’t take the exit, but turn right along the edge of the playing fields across the grass until you come to a line of trees and bushes ahead. Join the path on the edge of the trees and bushes and turn right. Carry on ahead to a path junction with a path coming in from your left. Take this path which leads directly away from the playing fields. The path turns right and then winds left and right. Ahead you will see a 3 storey block of flats. Follow the path to the right hand side of the flats where you exit the park onto Maismore Road.
[3] Turn along Maismore Road which leads onto Porton Walk. Continue ahead onto Painswick Road which bends left to Portway. Cross Portway when it’s safe to do so and take the double width tarmac path and cycleway ahead across the open grass between the two areas of housing. Follow the path and cycleway to Cotefield Road where directly ahead you will see the entrance to Kirkup Gardens. Watching out for traffic, cross the road and enter Kirkup Gardens. On entering, take the footpath to the right. After you pass the children's play area on your left, go left and then right to continue walking through Kirkup Gardens with the open grassed area to your right.
The cycleway is route 85 of the regional cycle network and runs from Manchester Airport to the Mersey Valley.
[4] At the exit on Longlevens Road, turn right, cross the road and turn left into Bramble Walk. At the end of Bramble Walk, go ahead and slightly right to enter Cricklewood Road. At the end of the road, turn left, cross the road and turn immediately right into Summerfield Road. Follow the road as it bends left, then right, and right again. Cross the road. You will see a large building ahead which is a modern Church - Parish Church of William Temple. Just past the railings which surround the Church, turn left along a path and enter Tayfield Park. Once you have pased the school buildings on your right you will come to the main park sign. Turn right here and follow the path past the children's play area on your left and at a path junction, go right to an exit.
The Parish Church of William Temple was built in 1965 and is regarded as one of the finest examples of post war church architecture. The church is named after William Temple who was Bishop of Manchester,then Archbishop of Canterbury from 1942 to 1944.
[5] From the exit turn left along Tayfield Road and continue to Portway. Turn right along Portway and cross the road opposite the Park Square shopping area at the pelican crossing and carry on back to the leisure centre.