Cheshire Walks - Tattenhall

By Cheshire Life on April 21st 2010

TATTENHALL is roughly eight miles south-east of Chester in the shadow of the Peckforton hills, the countryside mainly agricultural with the footpaths
crossing farmland via a succession of stiles. Getting over them is the only climbing you'll do all day.

The waymarking is generally good although it's not always easy to
pick up the next stile ahead across the field in front of you. One doesn't expect to use the compass in this terrain although it might help to identify the line of march and hence make it easier to find the next stile.

The other feature to take on board is having to walk through crops.
In the winter this is not a problem but it is sometimes disconcerting to stride forward over young wheat even if it is a right of way.

I parked at the kerbside beside the church on Chester Road just short of the village, opposite the primary school, a convenient spot from which to start our walk. The graveyard is interesting. One of the very first I looked at was a war grave, instantly recognizable to anyone who has visited the cemeteries in Northern France.

It commemorates one Private M Boylan of the Inniskillen Fusiliers, killed on November 8th 1918, three days before the Armistice. It is unusual to come across a war grave in an English cemetery, the dead being buried where they fell, or nearby, and it is moving to come across a solitary
one like this.

1 WALK away from the village on Chester Road and just beyond the first bend, past Brookhall Cottage, there is a stile and fingerpost in the hedge. Cross the first field to a footbridge across Keys Brook. The large house on the left is Brook Hall. Continue through a series of
fields, in some places negotiating electrified wire installed to keep the cattle in. If there are none in the field the chances are the current won't have been switched on - you hope! Our footpath reaches the road, Newton Lane, where we turn right, joining the rather obscure trail known as Bishop Bennet Way. This is really a route for cyclists since it's mainly on tarmac. Bishop Bennet was a traveller who investigated Roman roads in the 18th century. That's one for the pub quiz.

2 FOR the next 15 minutes we're walking on the road or on the verge at least. Ahead rises the dramatic isolated hill on which Beeston Castle stands. We reach Tattenhall Lane crossroads where there is a rather smart bus stop with regular buses to Chester and  Whitchurch.

Unless you want to bail out here, keep forward across the crossroads and continue towards Beeston. Soon the chance of a cuppa presents itself: Cheshire Farms Visitor Centre, a welcome pit-stop on this walk and well worth a visit. After refreshments, carry on along the road to a junction where the road swings right, a minor lane continuing onwards. We stay with the road and in 200 yards look for a stile and fingerpost in the right hand hedge. Cross the stile into a field and keep along the right hand boundary to another stile. Once over this one we find a mud track stretching away in front of us, bordered with electric fences on each side.

The track was heavy with mud on my visit in late November but it wasn't hard to cope with. When you come to a fork to the left, take it to where the track comes to an end at a pond. This made me wonder if it had been cut for access for fishermen. Whatever its origins, it's not on the map.

3 GO round the pond and keep ahead to a second one where we keep right along a line of wire to a footbridge. The way forward tends slightly uphill, passing an isolated stile. Its odd how sometimes you come across a stile standing in splendid isolation, presumably where the
hedge or fence has been removed. Why not remove the stile too? At the next stile, enter an enclosed path which reaches an access lane in 250 yards. Turn right down to the road and take another right along the pavement into the village of Tattenhall.

4 IN the village, keep ahead past two pubs, The Sportsman's and the curiously-named The Letters Inn. The village centre itself is full of character and free from retail proliferation. This is an ASDA-free zone! Keep right at the next junction and go through the churchyard gate
round the church to where the car was left at the kerb.

The weather stayed fine for me and let me get the most out of the surrounding countryside. The more I get to know these Cheshire villages, the more I like them and I'm happy to add Tattenhall to my list.

Signpost

High Street

Statue of man and dog (by Lyell) by the cricket field

Cottage on High Street

Tattenhall High Street

Tattenhall

Tattenhall Walk start point

INFORMATION

Distance: 5 miles
Time to allow: 3 hrs
Map: OS Explorer 257 Crewe and Nantwich
Start and finish: Tattenhall village, Chester Road by the church.
Refreshments: Cheshire Farms Visitor Centre, Newton Lane.
Buses: Services to Chester and Whitchurch. Ring Traveline 0870 608 2608

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