December 23, 2020.
SUTTON HALL, MACCLESFIELD CANAL, RICHMOND HILL, MACCLESFIELD GOLF CLUB, LANGLEY, BOTTOM RESERVOIR, TEGG'S NOSE, FIONA MCWILLIAM MEMORIAL, GRITSTONE TRAIL, CLARKE LANE, GREEN BARN FARM, MOSS LEA FARM, CLOUGH VIEW, RIDGE HALL, CHURCH HOUSE INN AND YE OLDE KING'S HEAD AT GURNET
Distance: 8 miles.
Difficulty: Moderate with strenuous climb.
Weather: Cold and Windy but Mainly Dry.
Leader: Chris Owen. Diarist: Alan Hart.
Alternative walkers: Colin Davison and Laurie Fairman.
Non-walking drinker: Tom Cunliffe.
Starting point: Sutton Hall car park, Sutton, Macclesfield.
Starting time: 9.31am. Finishing time: 1.10pm.
Despite a BBC weather forecast which predicted chances of rain being higher than 50 per cent every hour, we escaped with a light shower lasting ten minutes. As often happens in these circumstances the donning of waterproofs took longer than the rain lasted.
As we set off we discovered that fellow wanderers Dean Taylor and George Whaites were following from a discreet distance. Leader Chris decided to test the stamina of the two septuagenarians in the quartet by taking us up Tegg's Nose. This is one of many hills in the area which in your diarist's view have suffered from global steepening. This phenomenon receives little attention in the media but has been noticed by several of our more experienced comrades over the passing years.
From Sutton Hall car park we walked back to the entrance, crossed the road and turned right to walk down to the towpath of the Macclesfield Canal. Here we turned left with the waterway on our right as we headed north in the direction of Marple. At Bridge 43 (10mins) we crossed the cobbled path to reach the towpath on the opposite side before continuing our journey.
Now walking with the canal on our left we continued until Bridge 40 where we left the waterway and turned left into Black Road (25mins). With a recreation ground on our right we soon turned left up the cobbles of Richmond Hill (26mins) and swung right at the top. We swung left at a green public footpath sign (29mins) before dog-legging left and right up a flight of stone steps.
This path took us on the Macclesfield Golf Course, passing Hollins Service Reservoir on our right (39mins) before turning right downhill. The path took us through a metal kissing gate (54mins) and a footbridge across a River Bollin which was in full flow after recent rainfall (59mins). On reaching the main road we turned left (63mins)
We turned left at Langley Methodist Church (67mins) passing St Dunstan's pub on our left before turning left into Holehouse Lane (71mins). A stiff climb prepared us for what lay ahead as we reached the new wall surrounding Bottom Reservoir (76mins). Turning left we entered Tegg's Nose Country Park (78mins)
This 1,246 feet hill was quarried for its millstone grit from the 16th Century until 1955. A Bronze Age barrow (graveyard) was discovered on the summit. It was once called Tegge's Naze, and historians are divided over whether this was named after a Norse settler or a teg (sheep)
Chris announced we would take the shorter route on the right, later explaining that by shorter he also meant steeper. After a 20-minute lung-bursting climb we reached the memorial bench for Fiona McWilliam (98mins) and wondered whether we would soon be needing memorials of our own.
Fiona, 33, from Macclesfield, worked as an air traffic controller at Manchester Airport. She had just made her first solo flight in 1999. A week later, whilst a passenger in a Cessna Skyhawk light aircraft, she was killed when it flew into the mountain of Meol Sych in North Wales. The pilot and another passenger were also killed in the tragedy.
Her memorial includes an excerpt from a poem called High Flight written by Canadian airman John Magee Jr. Pilot Officer Magee was later killed in an air crash in England in 1941.
After pausing for pies we turned right at the memorial and swung left before taking the first path on the right. As it descended gently at first, we passed the Library in the Landscape (where passers-by leave and borrow books) before turning sharp right and beginning a steeper path down rocky terrain which brought us eventually to a sign for the Tegg's Nose Trail (123mins)
We turned right, using stepping stones to cross a babbling brook before reaching a sign for the Gritstone Trail on the left of Bottom Reservoir (142mins). A flight of steps took us to the southern section of the reservoir, which we circled anti-clockwise to emerge on Clarke Lane (147mins)
Turning left we soon followed a path on our right (149mins) towards Green Barn Farm. At a metal kissing gate marked with a yellow arrow we turned right and followed a path which went through three more kissing gates before emerging on a lane to the right of Moss Lea Farm.
We turned right (156mins) and then left at a small green public footpath sign, passing a house called Clough View on our left (164mins). At a pond we turned left following a Footpath sign and headed up steps to cross a wooden stile marked with a yellow arrow. The path headed uphill marked with other yellow arrows until we crossed a stone step stile and reached a road opposite Ridge Hall (180mins)
Turning right we passed Judy Lane on our left before reaching The Church House Inn (193mins). We followed the signpost for Macclesfield along a road called Jarman. We bore right to merge with the road to Macclesfield (201mins) and reached Ye Olde King's Head at Gurnet (209mins).
After de-booting we were ushered into a heated marquee outside the pub where we were joined by Tom Cunliffe and had delicious man-sized steak and ale pies, accompanied with chunky chips, vegetables and pints of Wincle Waller cask-conditioned bitter,
Meanwhile the alternative walkers set off from Taxal up Ladder Hill overlooking Whaley Bridge, calling at Goyt Reservoir and Fernilee, a journey of nine miles.
Happy wandering !
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