Shutlingsloe

There is a hill that you can see arouind the Cat and Fidle area that lookd like a child's drawing of a hill, the is Shutlingsloe.
With my walking friend still on holiday due to working in a school, we decided to do a walk which included Shutlingsloe. We drove to the Macclesfield Forest to start this walk and parked in the carkpark in the forest. The start of the walk led uphill through the forest mostly conifers and I hoped to spot some birds like Goldcrest that are usually seen in coniferous woods, sadly I didn't see anything, but it would have been a bonus the point was to walk.
After a steep climb up through the forest we took the path heading towards the hill and down and now started walking through moorland. There were quite a few other people about and it was fortunate that a path of stone slabs had been laid, as the surrounding moorland was quite boggy.
After and easy walk, we soon reached the foot of the hill and started the final climb. This part is very steep and quite rocky but after a bit of a scramble we reached the top. The view from the top is quite somthing looking acorss the Cheshire plain as far as the Mersey Estuary and the North Wales hills in the far distance. The  Jodrell Back telescope is also in view.
After spending some time on the top we continued the walk by descending on the far side of the hill down sa slope as steep as the one we had climbed but without as good a path, We descended onto a farck track and followed this down towards Wildboarclough.
We walked along the road for a short while but noticed a wooden bridge across a busy stream which ran alongside the road, so took time out to take some photos.

We returned to the road and soon left it again to take a path around the bottom of Pleasant Meadow where the path took us through gorse bushes, before walking through fields which climbed to reach a path on the edge of the moorland. This led down towards Oakenclough and here we left the track ti walk up the side of the stream flowing through the clough, before a short steep climb took us on the the edge of High Moor. We crossed the corner of the moor before descending again down a very wet pat to emerge on a road at Hanging Gate Inn.
We now followed this road back towards the forest and detoured a little to walk through the woods before returning to the Carpark.
It was a lovely walk with some steep climbs which happily didn't task me as much as they did my friend, the 6 and a half miles took us 4 and a half hours but we did stop quite a lot.