Shining Tor

Today we decided on a walk based around Shining Tor, which is situated near the Cat and Fiddle pub on the Macclesfield to Buxton Rd, it is the highest point in Cheshire and promised stunning views. Our starting point was to be the carpark at Errwood and having consulted the map we made for the Cat and Fiddle where there was a road leading down into the Goyt valley and the car park. We drove down this road only to find we could not drive through to the carpark we wanted, so after another look at  the map we set off into Buxton and up the Whaley Bridge road and turned down towards the reservoir at Errwood, only to find that that road was closed too. A third look at the map showed another carpark was on the route, so we drove up to Pym Seat and finally parked. The only drawback with this was that now the walk would end with an uphill climb, rather than a downhill walk as we prefer at the end.
The weather was a bit mixed, sunny spells but occassional black clouds, and just as we were about to head off one of the later decided to unload its contents, so rather than start off wet we sat it out in the car for ten minutes.

and now the walk.

We set off from Pym Seat, this was a group of rocks, which are no longer here and named after a preacher or maybe a highwayman, according to the sign. We crossed a minor road and then entered the moorland, the first part of the walk being along the ridge from Pym Seat via Cat Tor to Shining Tor. It was very windy so there was nothing to do but put our heads down and walk along the ridge, firstly a short climb to the top of Cat's Tor (there used to be wild cats around here) a slight descent and then we climbed up to Shining Tor, the route here is along stone slabs, obviouly laid to protect the land but today handy as they allowed us to keep our feet dry as the land was quite muddy with small pools of water too.

We finally reached the top of Shining Tor and went throguh a gate to the trig point, now I  have to say that from a distance Shining Tor is nothing special being the high point of a long ridge, unlike the nearby Shutlingsloe which is a prominent peak, as the picture at the top shows.

The view however from the top are excellent even though visability wasnt as good today as it has been on previous times I have driven over the Cat and Fiddle .Behind Shutingsloe we could clearly see another peak in the distance which turned out to be the Wrekin 47 miles away, we watched a plane as it flew into land at Manchester, could see Winter Hill as well. We could see the towns of Greater Manchester, the Beeston town was visible, as well as the summits of the Peak District. On a clear day you can see Snowdonia, Pendle Hill and even through to Ingleborough.

We left the summit and now walked down a path towards the top of Shooters Clough, once we were away from the edge the wind dropped considerably and the walking was much more pleasant. After a short descent we climbed again to a track leading to the Cat and Fiddle pub, but our route took us the other way and we started a long descent alongside Shooters Clough heading down to Errwood (our intended starting point). Lokking over the valley I could help but notice the purple heather and more unusual the strips of land within the heather which were clear of colour, I guess this must have been strips that had previously been burnt back. as the shapes were very symetrical. We also had great views of the reservoir on the descent.

We finally reached the bottom of the hill and took the track leading to Errwood Hall. The walk to the Hall was quite wonderful,  streams gurgled down on both sides of the track which was surrounded by Rhododendrons and Azaleas, which must be magnificent when in bloom. This track soon led us to the remains of the Hall itself. The Hall was built in the 1830s by a Manchester businessman called Grimshawe and was partly demolished for the stone when the reservoir was constructed in the 1930s, quite a short life for a fine house.
We had lunch within the remains (I dined at Errwood Hall haha!) the hall is surrounded by more Rhodys, 40,000 Rhodys and Azaleas were planted by Grimshawe when it was built.

We now left the hall and continued along a path by the side of a stream in a deep gully and descended to cross this stream on a wooden bridge, I then took a slight detour as on the hill behind the house is a graveyard where the Grimshawes and some of their employees were buried. Back on the path we started a  climb along the edge of woodland, fortunate as another heavy shower forced us to shelter in the trees.
After a steady climb we passed a small circular building which was built as a shrine to a Spanish governess of the Grimshawes who died suddenly. I looked in the shrine and there is still a small altar and various articles are found inside, crucifixes, pictures of Christ and even a small teddy bear.

We continued walking and shortly after the shrine we reached the minor road again, which we followed up the hill and back to the carpark.

The walk was around 6 miles and took us about 4 hours, which is quite quick for us, little in the way of wildlife although there was a buzzard on the drive up and we saw some deer on the way home.