Rather a lovely walk today heading down the old railway and then back along the Macclesfield Canal. The railway stops now at Rose Hill Station in Marple, but used to continue all the way to Macclesfield. Today, this stretch of line from Rose Hill Station to Macclesfield is a lovely path on which you can walk, cycle or ride your horse.
There seems to be many of these old railways dotted around the northwest of England. You can’t help but wonder if they’d not been scrapped would we have less traffic on the roads? I suspect our love affair with the car would have still made certain lines redundant, but I do sometimes wonder. It’s interesting that in many cases the area has developed its population quite significantly since the demise of the railway making its viability rather more positive than when it was scrapped. Oh well, we can at least enjoy the walk along the route.
We walked down the old railway from Rose Hill Station down to the Nelson Pit visitor centre where we crossed over to the Macclesfield Canal to do a circular walk back to Rosehill Station. It was lovely. There were a few people about, but most people behaved and observed social distancing.
There’s plenty to see as you walk along the towpath with some lovely bridges. All up it was about an 8 mile circuit, but mostly flat and quite easy going. Definitely a lovely walk and somewhere we’ll return. If you want to find out more click here for a PDF of the route.