[1] Leave the centre and turn right along Streetly Road. Just after the bridge, turn right off Streetly Road onto the paved path on the green space. Keep the stream on your right. Walk along it until you come to Bleak Hill Road, which you cross over with care.
[2] Continue opposite onto the grassy area, taking a stretch of gravel path (about 200 yards), which should be manageable by wheelchair / pushchair users. You soon join the metalled path where you bear left, continuing more or less in the same direction.
(A) On your right you’ll see the smaller of the Witton Lakes, with lots of water birds such as mallards, moorhens, coots and swans. These lakes were originally reservoirs containing drinking water for Birmingham. They were created in the early nineteenth century in what was then countryside. While the water was fairly clean when the reservoirs were built, it became increasingly polluted and the lakes were superseded by the supply from the reservoir in Elan Valley in central Wales (constructed between 1893 and 1904). The Witton lakes are fed by two natural brooks one of which rises at Bleak Hill. They are now a leisure amenity and are used for nature conservation and for model boating; the path around them is popular with walkers, joggers and cyclists.
[3] Continue along the tarmac path, keeping the lake on your right. You’ll soon come to the end of the first lake. Continue to walk in the same direction, passing the second lake. At its end, leave the lakeside path and take the tarmac path ahead quite steeply down beside the weir overflow. Follow the path through a grassy strip, with Witton Brook on your right, to the Marsh Hill dual-carriageway, close to the pub on the left.
At this point you can cut the walk short by turning left along Marsh Hill and walking to the junction with Streetly Road. Turn left and walk back to the centre.
[4] Cross Marsh Hill at the pedestrian lights, to your left, and turn right into it. Just before the bus stop turn first left, down the dropped kerb, onto the road surface of Boulton Walk (there is a lack of dropped kerbs ahead). Follow this quiet cul-de-sac ahead past cottage style houses dating from 1926, then first right through a grassy area and across Witton Brook. At the junction ahead cross George Road, using the raised crossing on the left.
Look through the bushes to see the four-square redbrick Witton Hall, the former manor house built in the 1830s.
Turn left into George Road and take the first right footpath through trees. Just before some bollards cut left across the grass for a few yards onto a parallel path and follow this beside Witton Brook and over a cross path.
Look left across the end of the lake to see the sculpture of a curled up dove, a peace monument created by Michael Scheuermann in 2004.
Follow the path through Brookvale Park with the boating lake on your left.
(B) Brookvale Park, another of Birmingham's early reservoirs, was taken over by Erdington as the centrepiece for its new Brookvale Park in 1909.
Continue on past the car park and wheelchair accessible fishing platform. At the far end of the lake, beside the lodge, turn left between plant boxes onto the wide path that skirts the end of the lake. When the path divides take the right fork past a games court and play area, and beside a hedge (on the left, enclosing a bowling green) to the exit on the Park Road / George Road corner.
The shiny gate posts topped with bullrushes record local memories.
[5] Leave the park, bear left across George Road and turn left into it. At the next junction cross Doidge Road and turn right into it. Follow Doidge Road around a left hand bend and quite steeply uphill to the T-junction. Cross Mere Road, using the ramp to the left, and turn right into it. Turn first left into Queens Road, continue uphill across Redbank Avenue, and regain the left hand pavement at the next ramp. Continue along Queens Road and, after a right hand corner, along Kings Road.
The late Victorian terraces here, with Gothic details, square bays, varied foliage panels and timber porches, are rather spoilt by replacement windows. No 27 has geese.
Keep on to the T-junction, turn left into Slade Road and follow it over Hampton Road towards the Campus entrance. Keep ahead at the junction with Marsh Hill / Reservoir Road and follow Streetly Road back to the starting point.