Distance: 7 miles
Difficulty of the terrain: medium
Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox
Countryside ridge walk between the towns of Congleton and Kidsgrove via the village of Mow Cop (home to the Old Man of Mow and Mow Cop Castle) 335 metres above sea level.
The Story
The Walk
Getting Back
Walking the Edge of the Midlands
Sat high above the Cheshire plain at the end of an imposing gritstone ridge, the village of Mow Cop split between the counties of Staffordshire and Cheshire, is one of the most striking places where the Midlands meets the North of England.
It is an atmospheric place, 335 metres above sea level, right at the top of the Staffordshire Potteries. Like the wider north Staffordshire area Mow Cop has a long history of coal mining which partially explains the craggy landscape where coal and other rocks have been hewn out of the hillside over the centuries.
The village is home to brilliant views, enigmatic rock formations and an iconic folly (Mow Cop Castle) at the top of a craggy windswept outcrop, it is small wonder that the village has featured several times in the magical realist, modern telling of ancient myths and legends, fiction of Alan Garner. A local boy from a little further north in Cheshire.
Cheshire, like Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire to the south of the Midlands region, is one of the counties which at points in time have been considered part of the English Midlands, but are now no longer. The case for inclusion in the Midlands rather than the North West of England lies in the county of Cheshire’s distinctive history and geography. The landscape is mostly very flat, but includes a craggy slice of Peak District to the east bordering Derbyshire’s High Peak and Staffordshire’s Moorlands. The countryside around Mow Cop is very different from the Peak District, even on the eastern side of the ridge, which lies in Staffordsire. However, with its gristone outcrops, Mow Cop and the edge running north from the village has a claim to be a westerly outpost of the Pennines England’s rocky spine.
Today, like other nearby hilltop villages in the Staffordshire, Cheshire borderlands like Biddulph Moor (home of the River Trent’s nondescript official starting point) Mow Cop is a quietly affluent place. Historically however, it is easy to imagine that like Heptonstall, a similar hilltop village in West Yorkshire high above the Calder Valley, it was an isolated, even insular place where life could be hard.
Staffordshire – remarkably – is home to the UK’s highest village, Flash (461 metres above sea level) in the far north east of the county. A place which in times gone by was infamous for all manner of nefarious activities including coining and prize fighting. Mow Cop’s historical claim to something with the potential to challenge the established order is altogether holier. It was in Mow Cop in 1800 that Stoke-on-Trent based religious leaders Hugh Bourne and William Clowes from Burslem, began holding large open air prayer meetings. These mass religious meetings and the evangelical Christian culture that developed around them formed the basis for Primitive Methodism. There remain a few Primitive Methodist chapels, albeit many now converted to other uses, in Mow Cop and other surrounding villages in the Staffordshire, Cheshire borderlands like Mount Pleasant and Biddulph Moor.
The Walk
Get the route: via Ordnance Survey maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox
I use the Ordnance Survey app to create and follow the Walk Midlands routes. Get your own subscription via the banner above.
This walk from Congleton to Kidsgrove, via Mow Cop, along the long, tall ridge between the two towns, right on the boundary between Staffordshire and Cheshire begins from Congleton Railway Station.
If alighting from the south, from the direction of Stoke-on-Trent, turn left out onto the carpark of Congleton Station.
Walk straight across the carpark until you reach the access road out onto a main road.
Upon reaching the main road turn left. Walk across a bridge over the railway line, then another bridge across the cut of the Macclesfield Canal which runs south from Marple to the Trent and Mersey at Kidsgrove.
Keep walking straight along the road through the suburbs of Congelton for quite some distance.
Presently the road curves sharply to the right.
Here you approach a crossroads with a church across the road to the left. Walk straight across the crossroads and keep heading down the road.
Continue walking straight along the main road for quite some distance approaching the edge of Congleton and the ridge straight ahead of you.
Presently off to the right there is a waymarked footpath running uphill, up a kind of ginnel into woodland.
Heading off to the right keep on walking up the footpath crossing a stile to enter a field.
Walk straight across the field, passing through a gate into another field which you also cross.
Approaching some thick woodland off to the left hand side of the field there is a footpath running into the trees.
Follow this path as it runs steadily uphill through woodland. Along the way you clamber up several short flights of steps and over a couple of stiles.
Eventually, after some distance off to the left there is a final stile out onto a field.
Once in the field turn to the left and walk across the field towards a wooden gate.
Upon reaching the gate, walk through it, then head up the short, steep bank on the other side straight in front of you. At the top of the bank up a low slope in front of you there is a stile which you cross.
On the other side of the stile you are standing on a low part of the ridge you will follow all of the way to Mow Cop several miles to the south. Behind you is the low lying Cheshire plain, while to the east in front of you is the hilly country of the Staffordshire Moorlands lead to the southern part of the Pennines in the Peak District.
Having reached the ridge, turn right and begin walking up a gentle slope uphill towards a stile leading to a path running into woodland.
Crossing the stile keep walking straight ahead along the path as it runs through the woodland.
Keep walking straight ahead following a path, which splits here and there, but keeps coming back together again. Along the way the waymarks and signs on stiles and other pieces of walking infrastructure keep changing between Cheshire and Staffordshire, a visual administrative reflection of the fact that you are walking along the boundary between the two counties.
You keep on walking along the path for quite some distance. Here and there the path crosses rocky outcrops and in time the trees thin here and there, giving you spectacular views down onto the Cheshire Plain below.
Presently you approach the dispersed, idiosyncratically named hilltop hamlet of Nick i’ th’ Hil.
Here the path heads steeply downhill towards a narrow lane running across the ridge.
At the base of the path beside this lane, off to the right there is a bridleway running off along the ridge once more. It is waymarked for the Gritstone Trail. A short(ish) long distance footpath between Disley and Kidsgrove which traces to escarpment that divides the Cheshire plain from the Pennines.
Head up this bridleway following it along the ridge.
After some distance you reach a paved road running along the ridge top towards Mow Cop.
Upon reaching the road the bridleway ends and you follow the road for over a mile.
The views on either side are impressive as you follow the road which gently slopes uphill as the ridge rises steadily to over 300 metres above sea level.
Nearing the edge of Mow Cop, which is quite a dispersed settlement, off on the right there is a footpath running over a stile into woodland.
Follow the footpath as it runs through the woodland entering a cutting of sorts until you reach a grassy meadow.
Cross this meadow following the path until you reach the far side passing a mobile phone mast on top of a hillock.
At the far side of the meadow there is a junction where you turn to the right following a path slightly downhill towards fields.
Follow the path around to the right until you reach a track. Here take the fork running ahead but to the right.
Follow the path around to the right until you reach a track. Here take the fork running ahead but to the right.
Keep on following this track until it turns into a footpath passing a tall gritstone pillar left behind by quarrying – the Old Man of Mow – on your left.
Passing the Old Man of Mow the footpath reaches a track near some houses.
Upon reaching the track turn left walking slightly uphill until you reach a point there the track forks once more. Here you take the right hand fork walking down towards a road lined with houses.
On reaching the road, turn right, then head up a track on the opposite left hand side of the road. This leads towards the National Trust managed Mow Cop Castle. A famously iconic north Staffordshire landmark built in the mid-18th Century.
You steadily approach Mow Cop Castle down the track.
Upon reaching Mow Cop Castle having taken in the views from the peak which is 335 metres above sea level, follow the path at the base of the tower to the right of the little car park beneath the rocky outcrop upon which the folly stands.
This leads you to a wide, rocky track running downhill to the right.
Soon the track becomes even wider running to the left. Follow this path as it runs downhill towards the centre of Mow Cop.
Passing through a gate the track approaches the back of the houses. Here turn left to reach an unpaved access road serving the driveways of the houses.
Upon reaching this unpaved road turn right and follow the track for a short distance.
Ahead of you to the left there is a short terrace of tall, thin, early to mid 19th Century terrace houses. Behind them runs an access road. Turn right and walk along this access road. Keep walking straight ahead until you reach a paved road.
Once on the paved road, turn left heading down a narrow road towards a phone kiosk and an impressive view out across the Cheshire plain.
Once beside the kiosk and the view out from the top of the ridge turn left and begin walking steeply downhill along the road.
Follow the road downhill for quite some distance. Presently the road enters some trees next to a small church and curves around sharply to the left. Leaving the trees you have reached the village of Mount Pleasant which sits nearer the base of the ridge. Here the road curves around to the right running steeply downhill towards the village green.
Upon reaching Mount Pleasant village green turn left, walking along the base of the green.
Turn left and begin walking along this road.
Soon you reach the edge of Mount Pleasant where the road levels out.
Follow the road for quite some distance passing a couple of farms. Ahead of you the edge of Kidsgrove becomes apparent.
Presently you approach the railway line running between Manchester and Stoke-on-Trent via Macclesfield.
Just before you reach the line off to the left there is a bridleway. Turn left and follow this bridleway for some distance until you reach a field.
Upon reaching the field turn right, following a footpath around the edge of the field.
Nearing the bottom of the field off to the left there is a footpath running into trees.
Follow this footpath walking straight ahead as the path runs through woodland on the edge of Kidsgrove following the line of a brook.
Presently the path comes out beside the railway line. Here turn left and follow a track for railway engineers out past a gate designed to stop railway access and down towards a road on the edge of Kidsgrove.
Upon reaching the road turn right.
Walk a short distance downhill, passing beneath the railway until you reach a major road. Upon reaching this road turn left. Follow the road a short distance until you come to the access road for Kidsgrove Station on the edge of the town centre to your left.
This is where the walk ends.
Getting Back
Kidsgrove is pretty well served by public transport. When I walked the route in mid-July 2023 the town’s railway station had an hourly local train service to Manchester and Stoke-on-Trent stopping at places like Congleton and Macclesfield on the way. It also had services to Crewe and Derby calling at Stoke-on-Trent and Uttoxeter, as well as direct trains hourly to Liverpool and Stafford, Wolverhampton and Birmingham. The town also has bus services to local distinctions in Cheshire and Staffordshire, including Newcastle-under-Lyme and Hanley.