Map of Nell's Journey

Map of Little Nell and her grandfather's journey from London to Tong. Taken from a 1923 map by Albert A. Hopkins and Newbury Frost Read and published in their book A Dickens Atlas. Hopkins and Read attached the following explanation to their map:

A map of about the period as been used as a basis. The full line (red) represents the probable journey, and the dotted line (blue) the possible journey. We know definitely that Hampstead was the first resting place, and the Little Nell died at Tong, for so Dickens told Archdeacon Lloyd, now deceased. It is hardly possible that the dying girl could have proceeded to Shrewsbury 20 miles away from Tong. Mr W.T. Tyrell has furnished much valuable help on this map and it is impossible to give all his reasons for the routes selected, but they seemed very logical to the Compilers even to the extent of extending the journey to Shrewsbury in dotted (blue) rather than full (red) line. The whole subject is full of perplexities and we have to base our theories on an unsufficient foundation but the routes shown may be considered as being as acceptable as any which could be brought forward.

Further clues to the route are given by Angus Easson in his notes for the Penquin Classics edition of The Old Curiosity Shop:

Ch 43-hard by some water: This is the Grand Union Canal; Dickens deliberately creates a dreamscape by the omission of names, though the fugitives' journey can probably be traced to Warwick (the walled town where Mrs Jarley displays her waxworks), then by the Canal to Birmingham, through the Black Country to Wolverhampton and then west (perhaps to Shrewsbury) and so finally to a village in sight of the distant Welsh mountains (usually identified with Tong, Shropshire, where an annual wreath has been placed on 'Little Nell's grave).

Ch 45-the black roadside: On 14 October 1840 Dickens told John Forster that in reading this passage 'You will recognize a description of the road we travelled between Birmingham and Wolverhampton' (The Letters of Charles Dickens, Volume Two, 1840–1841, ed. Madeline House & Graham Storey (1969), pp.131–2). In this chapter Nell and her grandfather follow the route that Dickens and Forster had taken when they visited the area in April 1840.