The Dishy Pharmacist and I found time to fit in a brief stroll on our way home from St Albans, via Solihull, Eccleshall and Congleton.The DP had wanted to visit Mow Cop for some time and now finally, before our appointment in Congleton, she had her chance. We made our way by a circuitous route to Mow Cop Castle’s small car park, where a National Trust warden worryingly advised us not to leave anything visible.Just above the car park is a memorial stone, placed in 1957 as a 150th anniversary commemoration of a meeting that began the revival of Methodism. The inscription reads:
"TO THE GLORY OF GOD. Camp meeting near this spot on May 31st, 1807, began the Religious Revival led by Hugh Bourne and William Clowes known as Primitive Methodism."We moved on to look around the ruins of the ‘Castle’, which turns out to have been built by one Randle Wilbraham, on the site of a prehistoric camp, in 1754. It was in fact an elaborate summerhouse built to look like a medieval fortress and round tower.
Some summerhouse!
To mark the occasion in 1937 when the Castle was given to the National Trust, over 10,000 Methodists met on the hill.The area around the castle was nationally famous for the quarrying of high-quality millstones ('querns') for use in water mills. Excavations at Mow Cop have found querns dating back to the Iron Age. Though visitors were originally allowed inside the folly the area surrounding it has sadly been fenced off due to an instance of suicide off the cliff edge.On the turn of the millennium in the year 2000 a large fire was lit beside the folly as part of a network of communicating fires across the country.
Turning along the Gritstone Trail path, we found our way to a trig point that overlooks the 65 feet high ‘Old Man O’ Mow’.
To me, this looked like a strange natural rock form, but it turns out to have been deliberately left behind by the quarrying activities hereabouts. This was the site of an ancient cairn, destroyed by the quarrying. Perhaps the ‘Old Man’ was left in memory of the cairn.We had excellent views on this fine sunny day, with the white orb of Jodrell Bank’s telescope shining brightly in the foreground.
Time was pressing, so we headed off down the trail, soon turning left along the South Cheshire Way. A nice field path led us to the boggy woodland of Roe Park, where the eagle-eyed DP spotted a bird in the distance, high up a tree.
This was a challenge irresistible to her new camera, and the result is shown here. Not bad considering it was about 20 metres away. My camera managed to capture the Great Spotted Woodpecker as a blurred black blotch on the tree trunk.
We emerged from the wood and found a magnificent tree sprouting from the centre of a field.
We soon passed under the main line railway; it occurred to me how little space this takes up compared with the wide swathe of a motorway. The railway sits neatly next to the Macclesfield Canal, beside which we tramped happily up to Congleton, encountering many other walkers, cyclists and fishermen on this scenic section of canal. The cyclists were in fact walking, which is a measure of the state of the towpath after recent wet weather.
A convenient picnic table in Congleton provided a good lunch spot where we were joined by three friendly swans. We then continued through Congleton, a fine railway viaduct soon coming into view. Despite the frost enduring all day in the shade, the warm sun had encouraged Mallards to get very frisky, and the Great Tits were also exhibiting amorous tendencies.Now we descended to the disused railway line that provides a conduit for the Gritstone Trail at this point. We soon abandoned the wide path edged by golden bracken, in favour of the Staffordshire Way (all the paths seem to be named today, even the canal section is called ‘The Cheshire Ring Canal Walk’) and up a track to a pub where a cheery chap was downing a pint whilst hanging on to his horse. Across a road a narrow boggy path took us to the crest of Congleton Edge, in a wood beside which some trail bikes were tentatively wrestling their way around a tantalisingly technical scrambling course. The noise, whilst not quiet, was muffled by the trees; the bikes were not encroaching onto public land; marshalls were in evidence. This (or similar) is a place where the bikers who terrorise our friends in Bonsall should be coming.
Rejoining the Gritstone Trail and the higher volume of people attracted to that path, we headed up a road towards the prominent radio masts that adorn the summit of the hill topped by Mow Cop.
Horses munched in the bright green fields above Biddulph to our left, but as we stopped to slurp the dregs of our flask of tea, to our right we watched the embers of the sun struggle behind encroaching clouds on this clear day. The Peckforton Hills showed prominently in front of the clear outline of the Berwyns, some 40 miles away.
The view was overlooked by a number of memorials, one being to a 19 year old Royal Marine Commando who died in 2004. It was unclear how he had died; perhaps in a car crash at this point.
And so, we returned to the Castle by 3pm, refreshed after this excellent little circuit in the sun.
Here’s a map of the 14 km route, involving 350 metres of ascent. It took us 3 ¼ hours.
By the time we got back to the car around 4pm, the light was fading. It had been an excellent start to the year, despite a bit of mist, with easier conditions than our previous two outings during this holiday period.
Llyn Ogwen - 314 metres – 10.20 (P&D Parking £3, free in lay-by 5 minutes up the main road to Capel, and elsewhere)
From there we shuffled up the lane and joined a pleasant path that led to the valley beyond Lodore, from where we squished over to a posh bridge and a newly renovated boardwalk around the southern end of the lake. These boards are made from recycled plastic bottles. They are black and surprisingly grippy in the wet, resembling creosoted wooden boards in appearance but presumably much more sturdy in the long run.
In my dreams, perhaps; that takes me back to an annual trip that sadly we will miss next year – and they already have as much snow there as they had all last winter!
The schoolkids were more evident than usual, and fairly boisterous. Perhaps it was The End of Term. The bravest were standing on the ice at the edge of the canal. I tried my best to persuade them to cross, but not even the promise of the notoriety of a video clip on U-tube would entice them beyond the safety of a leap to shore.
It was a no through road; the only car I met was a 4x4 with a lady walking her dog the lazy way. A couple of joggers were the last people I saw for over an hour. Occasional single storey residences littered the potholed route, some constructed of barge board or concrete, with corrugated iron roofs. Woolden View Farm was one of these – a small blue and white building with an iron roof. Horses stood motionless, as if glued to the spot by the frost. 
By now the motorway noise was quite noticeable and before long I was passing above the speeding vehicles on the M62. 
Beyond here, past frost laden ploughed fields, at Ring Pit Farm, the potholes ended and a firm grassy track continued to the edge of Little Woolden Moss. 
I was soon completely alone, confronted by what looked like a soil quarry. 
The path marked on my maps had long gone, so I followed a sign to the left that led through a sliver of woodland, thick with frost laden bracken, between the Moss on one side and lush farmland on the other side. 
Continuing along the marked path I approached the vicinity of some heavy earth moving equipment with obvious road access. Without my GPS (carelessly forgotten – it’s always a boon when exploring the flat Cheshire countryside) I was unsure as to my precise location, so I decided to ‘stay rural’ and return through the narrow strip (unmarked on the map) of woodland, all the way back over the M62, to turn right at Oakwood Farm, where collared doves fluttered in the breeze. On the way I met a woman with a dog, curious as to the reason for my presence. “Bird watching?” “No, but I did see rabbits in the frost glazed earth of the Moss.”
A left turn beside a hedge on an obvious if unmarked path led me back to a leap across a ditch to enter New Moss Wood for the last lap of this short walk. Finishing at 3 pm, it had taken about an hour and 40 minutes to do about 8 km.
