South Cheshire Way – Rando' Girls

November. It was no surprise that this was a damp walk under grey skies, but the mood was anything but sombre. A circular walk meant meeting with a friend and it was lovely to have company again. The walk started and finished at Wrenbury-cum-Frith, in non-covid times a post walk pub dinner would have definitely been part of the plan.

Black cows look at the camera while standing next to a red brick barn with a large crack in the wall. The sky is overcast and the field is full of lush green plants.

A woman in red top and wearing a blue backpack sands looking into a lake. The lake is overflowing the edges and the wind is blowing the rushes.

The first half of the walk is along the South Cheshire Way: pub quiz fact – at 55km it is just under half the length of the North Cheshire Way. Muddy fields were the start of the day, gently rolling through lush grass and pastures. The waymarked path diverted a couple of times from the map, which caused a bit of navigational confusion but we soon popped back out onto the road to Marbury and the accurately named Little Mere and Big Mere. Time for our legs and lungs to get a good workout, the route pulls steeply and steadily up Buttermilk Bank to a spectacularly long view to Peckforton and Bickerton Hill and the sandstone ridge.

Rolling grassy land with low bare trees under a grey cloudy sky. In the far distance, silhouettes of hills can be seen on the horizon.

A four-finger timber signpost stands next to a fence. The sign shows Marbury is behind the camera and Wirswall to the right. There are yellow waymarks but everything is green with algae almost matching the colour of the grass in the field behind it.

A single oak tree dominates the picture with brown leaves. The tree stands in a partly harvested field of maize, the dry stalks blowing in the wind.

All down hill from here, the path picks up the Bishop Bennet Way, another Cheshire Challenge path that I’ll be ticking off soon. After another muddy trudge through a recently harvested maize field we joined the Llangollen Canal which at this point is also the Sandstone Trail. We stopped here for a late lunch, timely as the weather began to close in; mizzle turned to drizzle and then to rain. Head down, deep in conversation at times and comfortable silence at others, we stomped steadily along the canal with barely a drop in height of 10 meters over the whole 10 km.

A three-finger timber signpost in front of a scrubby hedge. The words 'Sandstone Trail' are painted in blue on the post.

A rusty red narrowboat moored along a grassy towpath. The boat's windows are cracked open and there are logs, tyres and a BBQ on the roof. Leaves have fallen from the trees and the sky is overcast

Video of the walk HERE

The route is available on the Ordnance Survey website HERE

Cheshire Challenge distance	19km
Paths walked	South Cheshire Way, Llangollen Canal Walk
Total distance	20km
Total ascent	181m
OS map	OS Explorer 257
Date walked	November 2020
Time taken	6 hours
Cake	None this time 😦
Dance pose	Jazz hands
Total Cheshire Challenge distance completed	172km (1500km total)

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Tag: South Cheshire Way

Cheshire Challenge walk 10 – South Cheshire Way & Llangollen Canal Walk