Macclesfield Forest, Shuttingsloe & Wildboreclough - October 2017
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About Shuttingsloe | Parking Location | OS Map | Current Weather
A close friend had advised us about some great walks around Macclesfield forest and that Shuttingsloe was also a great point to visit. We found a nice route that would take us through the forest itself and then onto shuttingsloe and over to the small village of wildboreclough before turning and heading back to the start.
After parking alongside the reservoir, we followed the signposted route up to Macclesfield forest and then started our way through the forest. It’s quite heavily wooded, but easily marked out and the paths are great. We also found that there were a lot of different routes through the forest, and due to getting their a little late we settled on the more direct route through the forest, in hindsight we decided it would have been quite nice to spend a bit longer in the forest though.
Upon reaching the top of the forest the scenery changed hugely, we went from a heavily wooded forest to open sprawling moorland. Luckily, this was quite well paved as it was very moody due to the recent storms. We did happen upon a couple of places where going was a bit harder due to the amount of mood but the most extreme parts we didn’t have much of an issue getting through.
At the end of the moorland you come across a wonderful peak in Shuttingsloe, that juts up from the ground in a rather magical way, there are steps up to it on the side we approached and luckily so as the wind was very harsh and the further up we climbed the harsher it got. Once at the top we realised just how stormy it has become and the wind whirled around us spinning in every direction. It became obvious that we could only stay at the top for a short while so we soon moved on to the far side of the peak where the climb down was a slight scramble, made worse by the wind but not too difficult. Once off the main body of the peak the wind subsided, and we made our way down the much easier route that took us down to a road which then lead down towards Wildboreclough.