Walk · South Yorkshire

Boston Park and Canklow Woods

Rotherham · S60 2BD

2.2MILES

1h 15mON FOOT

85mCLIMB

CircularSHAPE

Off-road 90% 10% shares tarmac with cars

Field & moor path 45%Lane & track 45%Road with traffic 10%

Our drawing of the route — the shape of the walk, not a navigation aid. Carry OS Explorer on the hill. Off-lead information here is what walkers reported or what signage allows — never our advice. Whether and when a dog is off the lead is the owner’s decision and legal responsibility; keep dogs under control near livestock and follow signs on the day.

Starts at

Boston Castle, Boston Castle Grove, Moorgate, Rotherham S60 2BD S60 2BD

Parking

Free car park at the castle at the end of Boston Castle Grove, perhaps twenty spaces; it fills on event days and when the castle is open at weekends, with on-street parking on Moorgate as the fallback

Directions to the start →

Boston Park is Rotherham's first public park, just over eight hectares on the hill at the end of Boston Castle Grove off Moorgate, opened on 4 July 1876 to mark the centenary of American independence. The castle at the top is a hunting lodge of 1775 built for the Earl of Effingham and named for the Boston Tea Party, and it opens Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 3pm between April and September. The walk drops south out of the formal gardens into Canklow Woods, an ancient woodland of oak and birch on the valley side above the Rother, and climbs back up the far side. The park paths are surfaced; the woodland tracks are earth and get churned in winter.

THE SMALL PRINTRotherham has no borough-wide dogs-on-leads order. Of the three PSPOs in force in the borough, only two touch dogs: the borough-wide Dog Fouling PSPO 2020, in operation from 29 January 2025 for three years, which makes it an offence to fail to remove dog faeces from land covered by the order, with a fixed penalty up to £100 or a fine up to £1,000 on conviction; and the Town Centre and Clifton Park PSPO 2025, in force 15 January 2025 to 14 January 2028, which prohibits "failing to keep a dog on a lead and under control" within its mapped area. Boston Park sits immediately south of the town centre on Moorgate, so read the signs at the gate before letting a dog off — the boundary is set by a map in Schedule 1 of the order, not by a street list.

House rules, decoded

Off-lead allowed

REGION · SOUTH YORKSHIRE

GRID · 53.4258, -1.3577

SOURCE · HTTPS://WWW.ROTHERHAM.GOV.UK/COMMUNITY-SAFETY-CRIME/PUBLIC-SPACES-PROTECTION-ORDERS-PSPOS

Boston Park and Canklow Woods

House rules, decoded

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