Shutlingsloe

 

Shutlingsloe

October 08, 2025

RIDGEGATE RESERVOIR, MACC FOREST, SHUTLINGSLOE, HANGING GATE, FRAN COTTON’S HOUSE,

GRITSTONE TRAIL, LEATHERS SMITHY

Distance: 8.19 miles Ascent/descent: 1710 ft

Difiiculty: Easy apart from one steep climb

Weather: Grey and Overcast

Walkers: Mike Cassini, Hughie Hardman, Greg Owens, Russell Spencer, Simon Williams, Cliff Worthington.

Alternative walkers: Jock Rooney with Milly, Tom Cunliffe and Daisy

Leader: Russell, Diarist: Russell

Starting point: Layby Next to Ridgegate Reservoir

Starting time: 9.40am Finishing time: 2.00pm

This Weeks Route:

https://explore.osmaps.com/route/29078264/wednesday-wanderers--shutlingsloe-?

lat=53.22799&lon=-2.07148&zoom=13.2447&style=Standard&type=2d

I have saved this walk for public consumption. Anyone can follow the route using the OS app, providing you have a registered account (Free) in future.

Not much to say about this weeks walk really, it was a dull overcast day and this was a walk we did earlier in the year, some of us ventured up Shutlingsloe (The Cheshire Matterhorn), others

circumnavigated around its base.

Toward the end of the walk we came across Tom and Jock, so we all wandered back to the pub together.

Next week’s walk will be led by Russell, starting at Canal Wharf Car Park, Tom Brads Croft Rd, Whaley Bridge, SK23 7LX. 9.40am. Returning back to Whaley Bridge for a Beer at The Shepherds

Arms approx 2.00pm

Happy Wandering! See below for more on Shutlingsloe….

From the archives

We reached Three Shires Head, a point where four packhorse routes meet. Back in the 19th century, Three Shires Head was a place where lawbreakers or coiners evaded capture by crossing into a neighbouring county as in those times it was only possible for police to act within their own county limits. The local settlement of Flash takes its name from the trading in counterfeit money by these coiners, the word flash being associated as dishonest or not of genuine quality i.e. flash men (thieves), flash money (counterfeit currency) or flashy (not as good as it looks.) This was also said to be the setting for illegal prize fights and cock fighting as the perpetrators of such crimes could escape and soon disappear in this wild and rocky scenery.

We visited the Hanging Gate pub. Luda,  the landlady, tells customers that prisoners were led from the building to the gallows outside (hence the name of the pub).

But today Estonian-born Luda’s main topic of conversation was the proliferation in the area of lesbians or “lesleys” as she calls them.

We heard of two “lesleys” who run a nearby pub, one of whom allegedly walked out on her husband within a few weeks of a lavish wedding to “play for the other side”.

Luda claimed she had been kissed on the lips by a lesley who had a moustache, not a pleasant experience she insisted.

But at least there had been no “tongue-wonguey”.

Broad-minded Luda’s patience was also worn thin by a lesley version of dogging in her pub car park.

She had to tap on the steamed-up window of a vehicle one evening to call a halt to activities that you would rarely find except in the pages of Fifty Shades of Grey.

This next piece of information is of little practical use to the Wanderers but for the record lesleys have a habit, claims Luda, of running their hand up a woman’s back to see if she is wearing a bra.

Dedicated lesleys never wear bras and “let it all go South”, according to Luda.

Luda also has no time, she said, for “trannies”, some of whom try to use the ladies’ loo in her establishment.

On one occasion she followed one dress-wearing customer (who also had a large Adam’s apple and size 10 trainers) to the ladies only to discover (s)he had left the loo seat up.

Luda curtly told the cross-dresser that whatever outfit they were wearing “anyone with a todger”  had to use the gents.