Another lovely walk on the fringes of Delamere Forest, with fantastic views over 7 counties no less! This is a circular walk of about 5km, however I’m going to give you a couple of shorter options if you’re doing it with little ones who may find the full length a bit much. One word of warning, this walk can be very muddy in the winter so wear wellies!

The walk begins at Gresty’s Waste car park, off the A54, it’s free to park and there’s enough space for about 15 cars.

From the car park take the path next to the blue Sandstone trail sign, pictured here.

Follow this path for about 20 metres, then look for the gap on your right, to cross over the A54 - do take your time crossing this road as the cars fly past very fast.

Once you’ve crossed, follow the forestry path straight ahead.

There are plenty of slopes for the kids to play on in the areas adjacent to the path.

When you arrive at this junction, turn right.

Follow the path round and up the hill past the transmitter masts (here’s a good excuse to chat to them about how TV & phone radio signals work, as long as they don’t ask anything too taxing I’m fine!).

Keep following the path as the views open up on your left hand side (look for Liverpool on the horizon).

You’ll then come to the summit of Old Pale Hill (176 metres) marked by a ring of county stones (Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Lancashire, Shropshire, Denbighshire & Flintshire) pointing in their general direction with the large stone in the middle signifying Cheshire. It’s a great way to get your bearings and there are many landmarks to spot on a clear day - Jodrell Bank, Moel Famau, Liverpool and Long Mynd to name but a few. On the outer edge of the circle there are some plaques showing some of these landmarks. In the foreground you’ll be able to make out the main areas of Delamere Forest and if you take the path straight ahead this will go down to the visitor centre, but save that walk for another day!

From here, if the kids have had enough then just retrace your steps back to the car, which we used to do with ours when they were younger. But if they’re up for more, then you can continue on to Eddisbury Hillfort by taking the right hand turn from the summit (as you are looking straight ahead towards Delamere - see where the people are walking on the below picture).

Follow this path for about 250m (ignoring another right hand path further on) and when you arrive here, turn right.

Follow this muddy path all the way to the end then turn left and continue downwards on the road. If you are following this using my OS route then ignore the right turn here, I went the wrong way nitially and for some reason it won’t let me edit it out!

After about 140 metres turn right into this field and turn immediately right again up the slope.

At the top of the hill, squeeze between the wooden posts and follow this path up to the hill fort.

Now when I say a hillfort, don’t be expecting to find a preserved iron age fort up here! What remains is really just a load of mounds with nice views, but the kids have fun running up and down them! Out of the 7 iron age hill forts in Cheshire, Eddisbury was the largest and most complex, you can have a read all about its history here. The only visible part of the old fort is a small area of the eastern entrance re-excavated in 2010, which has a plaque next to it.

There are great views across to Delemere and beyond again.

The next section of the walk isn’t overly interesting to kids (just a long straight path across fields) so again you may just want to retrace your steps back to the car from here.

If not, continue all the way down to the end where you’ll find a stile. There’s also a good information board telling you about Eddisbury Hillfort there.

Go through the stile and turn right at the road.

Follow the road, past some houses until you reach this kissing gate which you go through.

You then keep walking straight ahead for about a 1km across fields, ignoring all other paths.

When you arrive at this kissing gate, go straight ahead down a narrow path.

At the below point, go round the stile (it’s broken) and take the path straight ahead, where you’ll meet the main forestry path you came up on. Turn left and walk down back to the car park.