Outdoor Discoveries

A roundabout route back from Knutsford

Even with the attractions of using newly regained freedoms, it helps if you have the weather that allows just that. That may explain how a walk back home from Buxton during the summer of 2020 was not followed up by anything near as substantive for over a week. Another explanation might have been that exercising a newly restored right was enough at that stage. The truth might be a combination of these and other things.

Still, a dull morning did little to stop me travelling to Knutsford by bus. There may have been earlier designs on cycling there and back once Tatton Park reopened in June, but they never came to anything. As if to emphasise how the pandemic had changed everything, I found that more were using the often quieter pedestrian entrance to the park that I started to favour instead of others. Once past that, there was more room for all in the park itself, with some sun breaking through the clouds too.

Any breaks in the cloud cover did little or nothing to help with photographic efforts around Rostherne, a pretty place and a deserted oasis where one could relax a little more. There was a return trip to both Tatton Park on a scorching Friday a few weeks later that helped with the photographic side of things. The number of cars going into Tatton Park then really struck me then, on a getaway that eased any foreboding about my being able to get through the months that lay ahead.

Returning to the first encounter with Rostherne, I then continued from there along Marsh Lane before turning onto Birkinheath Lane, which led me to join Ashley Road. The M56 lay to the north as I did all this, and I was not going to Ashley itself. Quiet unpeopled lanes were my lot, a restorative combination given all the tension of the pandemic times.

Mobberley was my next landmark. Getting there allowed me to leave tarmac tramping after me for a spell of field crossing and track travel. Others were going the way hereabouts as well, though we did not get in each other’s way. After Mobberley station, I returned to field crossings again to reach the North Cheshire Way.

That conveyed me passed a deserted Manchester Airport with no flights arriving or departing. The curbs on international travel were more than evident as I strolled by the perimeter fence for the first and only time in my life. It was a far crying from the deafening din that I met while cycling underneath one of the runaways while going by the A538. My hearing thankfully recovered with no lasting effects.

The size of the tunnel through which the River Bollin flows under the same runaways was something that surprised me when I got that far. It also meant a descent and subsequent ascent that I might have liked to avoid after walking so far and with so far to go. This also was my meeting point with the Bollin Valley Way, the course of which would convey most of the way back to Macclesfield and thus home.

Before all that, I would need to endure a very busy stretch until I passed Wilmslow. There was plenty of sun by now, and my water supplies may not have been that great at this stage. The National Trust site of Quarry Bank Mill was well peopled, as were the trails and rights of way around it. Then, there were The Carrs in Wilmslow itself, an even busier spot in many ways. This was well outside my comfort zone at the time. Nevertheless, an opportunity to buy an ice cream and a soft drink could not be passed up while in the vicinity. The first topped up my energy levels, while the second brought me added hydration.

Once past where everyone had gathered, all was again blissful as I traipsed the Bollin Valley Way back to Macclesfield. This was largely unpeopled, if at times overgrown. Next to the Mottram Hall Hotel, again likely quiet because of the pandemic, was one stretch where the vegetation appeared to have gone wild. Even so, the quietude felt soothing and without worry like the busy spots where I had been. That sentiment applies to what I experienced around Prestbury and Riverside Park too. It was growing late in the day, which may have helped cut down on the numbers out and about anyway. The whole walk remains one of the longest that I have done, and I returned some with plenty of satisfaction from it all.

Travel Arrangements

Bus service 88 from Macclesfield to Knutsford.