Peak Passions by The Guardian

Author:The Guardian [Guardian, The]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: walking, peak district, Roger Redfern, country diary
ISBN: 9780852653012
Publisher: Guardian Books

3. The East Cheshire Hills

6th January 2009

We came down from the high ground just as the first lights were twinkling in the frosty air over Macclesfield. We could just make out the black whaleback silhouette of Alderley Edge but, in general, the Cheshire Plain seemed lightless and lifeless.

Along the hillside lane at Calrofold we passed the former home of the late, lamented Brian Redhead then entered even deeper shade where the trees began. It was the end of a short winter’s day on these heights, crossing from the confines of the Goyt Valley in Derbyshire to come over the moortops and in view of broad prospects across Cheshire as far as the Clwydian Hills over the Welsh border.

The lane beyond Calrofold circles down around Cliff Hill to come by Higher Hurdsfield, at the very upper, eastern limit of Macclesfield, before coming through the great trees that wrap about Swanscoe Hall. By taking narrow Kerridge Road we slant northwards up the western flank of delightful Kerridge Hill, that spine of gritstone once the scene of busy activity to quarry this useful rock. Down at the north-west corner of the ridge stands Kerridge village, its unusual name derived from the Old English “Gaeg Hrycg” - key ridge. This stone settlement clusters close below the flank of its hill and, to my mind, is one of the prettiest in all the Peak District. It’s a busy little place but quite overlooked by visitors to these south Pennine hills.

We, of course, never saw the crest of Kerridge Hill but the street lights were on in the village, casting our long shadows across the empty byways as we went. And then we were down in adjacent, bustling Bollington where the Macclesfield Canal crosses on its towering aqueduct, now a solid block of blackness under the stars. This fine waterway once served the several flour and textile mills that still stand as giant edifices in this district; now, though, it is a well used recreational facility, part of the Cheshire Ring.

29th September 2009

It seems hardly possible that my old friend Charles Tunnicliffe has been dead more than thirty years, especially when wandering through his homeland on these western flanks of the south Pennines. I was here again the other day to get photographs from as close as possible to the sites he chose to draw and paint the subjects closest to his heart in the first thirty or so years of the twentieth century.

It was not a particularly difficult task because much remains intact from the long gone times before the last war. Out on the edge of the Cheshire Plain there’s the little ladder of Bosley Locks on the Macclesfield Canal; on the slopes above Langley village Ridgehill Farm stands hard by the junction of Ridge Hill and Judy Lane with a northwards view across the valley to Pyegreave Farm near Coal Pit Lane, another subject of an early watercolour; two miles to the west, again out upon the plain, stands the gallant tower of

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