Grand Western Canal
Eleven level, lock-free miles across mid-Devon from Tiverton to Lowdwells, now a country park
The Grand Western Canal is an eleven-mile length of water winding across mid-Devon from a basin at Tiverton east to Lowdwells, on the Somerset border. It has no locks along this stretch — the canal was cut to follow the contour, keeping to one level the whole way — so the towpath is flat and even, and the walking or cycling is about as gentle as it gets.
It was built to carry limestone. Opened in 1814, it brought stone down from the quarries at Westleigh to be burned in kilns at Tiverton, and horse-drawn barges worked it commercially for well over a century. It was meant to be part of a larger through route linking the Bristol Channel to the English Channel, with the far end running on towards Taunton, but that connection was never completed as planned and the eastern section closed in the 1860s once the railway arrived. Only the Tiverton pound survived.
What is left is now run by Devon County Council as a country park and local nature reserve, and it is one of the quieter waterways in the Albion Guide. The water is thick with reed, lily and wildfowl, and the surrounding country is soft farmland and low hills. Tiverton Canal Co still runs a horse-drawn barge from the Tiverton basin, one of the last working in the country, which gives a direct sense of how the canal was once used.
The towpath is open the full length and easy to join at Tiverton, Sampford Peverell or Halberton, among other points. There is no through navigation to anywhere else — the canal is a self-contained loop of history rather than a link in a network — but as a level, unhurried walk it is hard to fault.
