Bulkeley Hill

(S/E) From the entrance of the Pheasant Inn, with the pub at your back, turn left and walk to the road junction. Cross straight over into Barracks Lane. At the next junction, keep right, past the car park and then the Craft Centre on your right. Pass the “Unsuitable for motor vehicles” sign and a cottage on the right and follow the narrow lane downhill. Keep on the road along the bottom of a valley, ignoring a footpath on the left. Pass another house on the right, ignoring the path to Willow Hill, and then a further cottage on the right.

(1) When the road bends right, turn left at a footpath sign over a stile into a field. Cross the field parallel to a stream on your right, passing close to a telegraph pole, before crossing a footbridge into woodland. Walkthrough the wood to a kissing gate into a further field and head straight on, uphill, to a stile in a crossing fence. Keep on uphill, parallel to the fence on your left, to pass through a kissing gate before crossing a farm track and negotiating a stile in the hedge beyond. Follow the field edge, still uphill, ahead of you. Beyond a further kissing gate and stile, you reach the top of the hill at a crossing path.

(2) Turn right towards the buildings. Pass through a belt of trees and cross a stile into a farm lane at the entrance to The Bungalow. Turn left. After a short while, you reach the end of Coppermines Lane. Go straight on, across the field ahead of you on the Sandstone Trail.

(3) On entering the woodland, follow the Sandstone Trail uphill through the trees to reach a covered reservoir, which you pass on your left. Beyond that views open up through the trees on your right over the Cheshire Plain. Keep to the path along the edge, passing an interpretative panel near the summit shortly before a viewpoint to the wooded slopes of Peckforton Point. Keep on in a similar fashion; the path starts to head downhill and then veers left down to a farm track, where you turn right.

(4) At a sandstone house divided in two by a large archway, turn left then immediately right up to some steps and through a kissing gate into fields. Follow the field edge, passing through a series of kissing gates and then along a section enclosed between gardens on the left and the forest wall on your right. When you emerge again into an open field, continue in the same direction until you reach Hill Lane.

(5) Turn left (signposted Pheasant Inn and Beeston) and walk downhill, ignoring two turnings to the right. At the crossroads at the end of Rock Lane, turn right to return to the Pheasant Inn.(S/E)

One long climb and occasional muddy sections.

Beeston Castle was built in the 1220s by Ranulf, Earl of Chester, on a rocky sandstone crag 250m above the surrounding Cheshire Plain. It’s well, over 100m deep, is one of the deepest in any English castle and is said to contain treasure hidden by Richard II.

Peckforton Castle is a mansion built in the style of a medieval castle by John Tollemache, a local landowner and MP, between 1844 and 1850. It is now used as a hotel and wedding venue.

Peckforton Mere is passed on a footpath from the gatehouse to Peckforton Castle.