(S/E) From the front door of the Red Lion, turn right and walk up to Church Street. Turn left along the main road. Cross over at the traffic island and go through the gate into the churchyard.
Bear left past the tower and exit the churchyard into cobbled Church Lane. Turn right and bear left into Ball Lane; walk down the hill into Brough Park.
At the bottom of the hill ignore a path off to the left and carry on in the same direction, bearing left into some trees below the bandstand.
(1) At a fork near the end of the trees, take the left-hand path. At a T-junction, go straight on across the grass; cross a park road and continue ahead to the far corner. Take a footpath off to the left down into the trees.
At a kissing gate you enter an open field. Follow the path along the top of two fields. After a kissing gate, climb three steps into a fenced section and then pass through a hand-gate on your right.
(2) The path descends between two gates and down a flight of steps, then descends further before swinging left behind a workshop to a final short flight of steps down to the road.
Turn left and follow the riverside road to the main road (the last footbridge on the right gives views of Brindley’s Mill).
Turn right and cross the main road at the lights (A 523). Turn right to cross the bottom of Belle Vue then turn left by the lime kilns into Kiln Lane. Keep right at a fork after the houses, then bear left by a house called Bryn Helyg and follow the sunken track over the brow of the hill.
(3) Descend past Oakwood Cottage to a bridge over the old railway. Turn left before the bridge, then right through a metal barrier onto the former railway; turn right and pass under the bridge.
Follow the old railway for nearly half a mile to a bridge over the River Churnet. Immediately after the bridge, turn left down the embankment to a stile and bear right across the field ahead of you.
(4) Cross a stile and follow a path, then a concrete farm track, along the left-hand edge of the next field. When the track bends right, turn left over a stile and follow the path along the canal feeder. When the leat leaves the trees, continue to follow it (dropping down into the field on your left as necessary to avoid muddy stretches).
(5) The surface improves beyond the start of a golf course on your left and the path continues its winding way through trees again, past a series of footbridges, to the road at Ladderedge Country Park.
Cross the road and follow the metalled farm drive opposite.
(6) When the drive crosses the leat, turn left along the stream with the Churnet in close attendance on your left. Drop down to the left and climb a short slope to a kissing gate. The leat re-emerges from a conduit and you follow it until it finally meets the canal.
(7) Turn left over the former aqueduct, then turn right between security fences. Cross the entrance to a scrapyard and follow the path opposite to another stretch of the old railway; turn left. Walk past more security fencing, then take the right-hand path as you approach a railway bridge.
(8) Turn left then right (before the bridge) along a narrow path that leads between houses out to the road. Cross and follow a metalled path opposite.
(9) This path climbs to some cemetery gates then continues as a track to pass the cemetery chapel and Condlyffe Almshouses into Cheddleton Road. Turn left and walk past All Saints’ Church on your right and St Mary’s on your left. Cross the A53 by the Ash Almshouses and walk up St Edward Street. Turn right into Stanley Street to return to the Red Lion. (S/E)
