The Mini-Mountain

Ridgegate Reservoir

The second of our Peak District walks was Macclesfield Forest and Shutlingsloe hill. Heading towards the Peak District, we knew there'd be a lot of snow- there were still big snow clouds lingering from Boxing Day night (Boxing Night?), but we didn't quite realise how much there would be once we got up into the hills. Macclesfield had had a bit of snow, but no more than a few centimetres at best. So, when we got out the car and put on our boots at Ridgegate Reservoir, although the road was icy and there was a lot of snow in the forest, even then we didn't understand the amount of snow we were going to come across.
For reference, the walk we did should have taken around 2-4 hours, depending on walking pace and stops. In the very difficult weather, it took us around 6-7 hours. We did stop at the Hanging Gate pub for a fairly long time though.

Macclesfield Forest is owned by the Forestry Commission, and is used as a source of timber and water, from the two nearby reservoirs.It also has important leisure and wildlife connections. Primarily spruce, it provides habitat for goldcrest, crossbills and other coniferous-loving species. We headed up the red route towards Shutlingsloe through the forest, and quickly found that there was a lot more snow up here than there was in the middle of town!

Despite this, it was fairly busy in the forest, until we came to the footpath up to Shutlingsloe peak. Apparently another name for it is the mini-mountain, which, as I found out the following day, when we drove past and visibility across the Peak District was much better, was very very apt. It's 1,660ft high, and pretty much the epitome of a mountain in all but height. Straight up one side, straight down the other- when we came to it, through white-out snowclouds, there were a few people sledging, which made me think it was less steep than it actually was.

The bottom of Shutlingsloe

Then, I saw the path, disappearing up at a 45' angle, and realised we were in for a climb, rather than a walk. It was a trek up that can't really be put into words, so hopefully a few pictures will do it justice...

The top was sheer white-out, with none of the view to be seen. The path down the other side towards Wildboarclough was difficult to find through the masses of snow- there are actually two paths, one that's very steep, and one that felt very steep, but apparently wasn't quite as bad. In the thick snow that came up to our knees at points, it was pretty treacherous. It's not a walk for those who have any difficulty in walking difficult routes, because under the snow there were still tufts of grass, rocky bits and very steep parts of the path. Which I assume we were on, as most of the time we ended up just following previous walkers' tracks, and hoping we wouldn't trip and cause a broken ankle. There was no way of avoiding falling over completely, and more than once we both found ourselves covered in snow after a slip!

The 'view' at the top!

At the bottom the path ran down to Wildboarclough, and a small pub, the Crag Inn. We didn't stop as we had a long way to walk still, heading up through the fields on a footpath. This again, was popular with sledges and snowboarders! A couple of kestrels sat on the electricity wires near Sheepclough Gutter. We found a few more snowmen along the walk as well, and a big buzzard got disturbed on our approach to one of the remote farms found out in a valley.

The walk back from Wildboarclough

It was starting to get dull by the time we got to the last crest of hill and saw the Hanging Gate pub in front of us- caution had paid off, as we would have had a very long walk in failing light across hills if we had stopped at the Crag Inn! This last part of path was extremely muddy though, and a bit of a challenge to get down without getting stuck.

Happily we both kept our boots though, and found the Hanging Gate was tiny, but served hot chips and had a fire to dry our coats out a little bit by.

When we left it was dark, so I don't have any pictures of the walk back along the country lane to the car. It was very straightforward though (literally), and not difficult to walk at all. The snow clouds had cleared by this time (it was about 5.30pm), and the sky was utterly dark, with the stars really bright. The moon was only half-full, but we could see our shadows as we had our back to it walking along, which meant we kept checking back to make sure there wasn't a car on it's way! Thankfully it was very quiet, and we made it back to the reservoir fairly quickly for about 6pm. The last car there, there was none of the tricky parking that we had had to do in the morning!