Collected Musings of a Hill Wanderer

I have been looking at BBC Weather’s Monthly Outlook and it looks as if low pressure will control July’s weather with nary a blocking anticyclone in sight. It might cheer up in August but any spell of dry weather, however short-lived, would be welcome for a longer hillwalking outing. I am still pondering ideas but, on the basis of the expected weather, one can only hope two or three days away. Still, we haven’t done too badly so far this year and there’s hope for more yet. 2004 as a whole was memorably short on sunshine but I came lucky with a few July days in Scotland’s West Highlands, encountering only one really grotty day and I needed a rest then anyway after walking from Oban to Glen Noe on the day before. So, dry weather walking opportunities haven’t been derailed, merely rescheduled. I’m sure that I’ll make something of what we get anyway…

P.S. The BBC’s newfangled weather charts extend out to five days rather than the previous two or three, making the site more useful again and there are certain advantages to having the new weather graphics.

It’s absolutely chucking it down here as I write this and weather warnings have been issued by the Met Office for now until Monday. Appropriately enough given that the Glastonbury Festival is in train and that Wimbledon is on the horizon, the weather has taken to doing its usual watering session at this time of year. Still, there is a glimmer of hope for the start of July and a return to hill country may be in the offing for then. In any event, my mind is now turning to planning multi-day hillwalking trips for over the summer and I may mull over my options in a future post. Due to one thing or another, my only hill outings in the last few weeks have been limited to ambles up and around Teggie and last evening tempted me out after work to enjoy the long evening. Nevertheless, I haven’t forgotten about this website as I have been engaging in some under-the-bonnet tinkering and that should continue for a wee bit more. I also have it in mind to add to the photo gallery as well and it may face a spot of re-organisation too. having sections for the West Highland Way and the Pennine Way does make a modicum of sense so that may happen.

Update: We don’t seem to be doing too badly here in Macc, especially when you consider the deluge that has hit Glasgow. Hope everyone is OK up there.

I seem to be spreading my wings a bit further afield with a link from Tom Mangan’s intriguingly-named Two-Heel Drive. There is a lot of very good material about the U.S. backpacking scene (including a salutary tale on the dangers of infection from a blister) here and I must return and read a little more, Thanks for the link, Tom.

Apparently, Network Rail is back working on the railway line between Macclesfield and Manchester yet again at the weekends. And finding out what they are doing is less easy than it should be; they must think it business as usual. In the now usual style, they have gotten to not telling us about the works; maybe they realise what we might say to them. It wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t have to tolerate this situation as much as we do. Since I moved here in 2000, there have been engineering works on this line on all but two summers since then, and 2003 was a full closure during which you’d expect them to sort everything out. To be frank, the situation is a ridiculous state of affairs and I just wish that it would stop and that they would keep away from the line for the next decade, safety-related work excepted.

With the long evenings upon us, the possibility of having a short evening stroll after work becomes a reality and Cheshire does supply the goods. The range of opportunities includes the hill country next to Macclesfield, public footpaths through rolling pastoral land, canal bank tracks and local long distance trails. Friday evening saw me head into the hill country but there’ll be more on that later. Other evenings have been wiled away by the Macclesfield Canal, either by heading north to nearby Bollington or south towards Bosley and Gawsworth. Pastoral strolls have taken me between Nether Alderley to Macclesfield or, on one winter’s afternoon, from my own doorstep to Wilmslow, which proved to be a shorter journey than I expected.

Speaking of my own doorstep, a good number of my local walks have started and/or ended right there and so it was last Friday. It was a spot of road walking that got me to Tegg’s Nose Country Park, not a large place but the views make up for that. From the top of “Teggie”, which was subject to quarrying in times past, I dropped down to Langley before I encountered what I consider a peach of a path; the views over the villages Langley and Sutton towards the radio mast surmounted Sutton Common will draw me back. One afternoon, another stroll began from Teggie and that took me through Macclesfield Forest to the small settlement of Forest Chapel, over the summit of Shutlingsloe and then home via Langley. It was a six hour venture and all I had to do was walk straight out the front door of my town centre abode.

Extending the “from my own doorstep” theme, January strolls have seen me head to Lyme Park near Disley by way of the Middlewood Way, which largely follows the alignment of the old Marple-Macclesfield railway line, and the Gritstone Trail, which extends from Kidsgrove in Staffordshire to Lyme Park. That takes me onto the longer distance paths around here. I have been know to travel over sections of the North Cheshire Way, the Bollin Valley Way (which extends from Macclesfield to Partington) and the Dane Valley Way. The latter goes from Buxton in Derbyshire to Middlewich in Cheshire and I followed part of its length while on a particularly muddy walk from the Cat and Fiddle Inn to Rushton Spencer in November 2004; the conditions underfoot were hardly a surprise given how wet 2004 was.

There’s plenty of walking to be had around here all right; all that is needed is a spot of map perusal and some time to explore the possibilities. The Discover Cheshire website has a walking section where you can find out about these and other options.