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For us, Deep Hayes is a local County park. It’s a beautiful place in itself. However, we wanted this walk to be as large and as varied as we could make it, so we extended the walk along the canal for a while. This does mean we looped back on ourselves a couple of times, but there is so much to see here that it is worth it.
We started from the main car park, along the main path that runs along the left of the lake. The path is wide, very flat and passes through a corridor of trees. Here, there were a lot of birds swooping across the path. Not too far along this, we took a turn to the left over a stile. Here the path is wilder and starts quite steep but flattens at the top as you become surrounded by much heavier woodland. Turning right, the path gets narrower and you feel much closer to nature as it encloses you in the narrow green pathway. The path again becomes steeper, and you follow it to the peak before circling down back on yourself.
The downward route first continues the same theme of dense deep woodland, but eventually opens to some great views. Extra height really adds to this. Further along is the foundations of an old farm building and some fields that seem odd at first at this height, but it’s a beautiful area. Continuing down, the path becomes wider again and we were soon back to near our starting point.
Rather than retracing steps early on, we crossed directly over our original path. This takes in a nice wider open section of woodland, and skirts nicely past the lake before again heading up into deeper woodland, this time on the opposite side. This is another steeper section but never too much of an issue for most walkers. Once you’ve taken in the height, while passing a rather large field, you’re heading back down again.
From here, we again joined the main path and headed up towards the waterfalls at the top of Deep Hayes. We decided to carry on past them for now, as we planned on heading over this way again later. Past the waterfall is a rather muddy path, we even found some trees had fallen over the path and were yet to be cleared. It was obvious this was a trail less travelled, though it is by no means a bad path. It was very accessible for the most part and easy to follow. The path gradually undulates, while for the most part getting higher each time. There are a few stepped sections, as well as wooden platforms to help grip in the mud, and it was never boggy. The woodland here is still quite dense but does start to drop away to the edge of the forest and after a bit of walking, you head out to a farmer's field. It's all well signposted, so moving through is very easy.
Traversing the farmers field was uncommonly a pleasant experience. There was a very clear green route in the grass making the way obvious and easy to navigate. Once through the farmers' fields, we entered the town of Cheddleton. Walking past the small coffee shop, school, pub, and houses was a treat as it’s a very nice area. Not too far past the church and you’re on Cheadle road. Being a main road, it is quite busy but luckily, it’s not far to the canal.
The canal path is a standard affair, very flat and easy-going with a few walkers and cyclists passing us by. It's nice and calm, and very different walking that the woodland previous. It's a long stretch of the walk, with many canal boats passing and some nice wildlife too. This section of the walk is part of the Staffordshire Way and therefore is obviously well maintained. We picked up the pace here due to it being so flat and it didn’t take long for us to get back to Deep Hayes and the car park. From here, you could call the walk done but we wanted to visit the waterfalls, so we headed back up the very first path we started the walk on.
We passed the initial turn off and just carried on up the path. It’s very open with lots of trees and a very wide path. On a sunny day, it’s great. Once at the waterfall (which is manmade) there are steppingstones across. It maintains an industrial feeling, but it’s still a great spot especially for kids. Once we had taken some photos, we popped over the steppingstones and then headed back around the lake from the other side and then made our way back to the car. It was great making the most of the area and finding all the winding paths we could find. With a canal walk helping to extend the day.
