Roman Lakes & Mellor Cross and Cobden Edge

Description

(D/A) From New Mills Gold Club Clubhouse, cross Eaves Knoll Road and join the track to Shaw Farm, with the course on your left and a marshy field on your right. After 400 yards, turn right into the farm entrance.

Turn left in the farmyard and walk in front of the farmhouse, joining a track to the right of a wooded valley. Just before a gate, cross a stile on your left, down a few steps into the wood.

(1) Cross a small wooden footbridge then follow the path down to the stream, which you cross on another footbridge (with a footpath sign pointing in the opposite direction).

Walk up the other side of the valley and turn right through a stile. Walk downhill along a fenced path with steps, then briefly divert left round a garden, along a permitted path (white arrow). Follow the drive down to Brook Bottom and the Fox pub, walk, left.

(2) From the Fox car park near the telephone box, follow the track marked Goyt Way downhill. Go under the railway bridge and pass Strines Station.

After a short stretch of cobblestones, turn right by Strines Hall, following a bridleway over a stream then uphill over the railway and left to Greenclough Farm.

(3) By the farm, cross a stream and follow the Goyt Way on your left. When the track splits, keep to the Goyt Way on the right (slightly uphill). Stay alongside the railway, ignoring a signposted bridleway on your right.

Pass Windy- bottom Farm then go through the tunnel under the railway to meet the River Goyt. Beyond Roman Bridge (on your left and worth the short detour) and Floodgates Cottage and a weir you go under the railway viaduct, then pass Roman Lakes on your right-hand side.

(4) At the junction with Lakes Road, turn right past Bottoms Hall. Ignore a track off to the left and continue along the track above Linnet Clough to the road past the scout camp and on to Mellor Golf Club. Follow the road around a left-hand bend to the club entrance.

(5) Turn right onto a metalled track (left of a gated car park) that climbs gently through trees and then contours across the course.

Pass a gated driveway on the left then, at a junction of tracks, take a path on the left that leads uphill. The path winds uphill past an old quarry. At the next path junction turn left and, on meeting a metalled drive, carry straight on, uphill and continue to Mellor Cross.

(6) Take the rough track opposite, which climbs to the left of the cross and then levels off, with views ahead to Kinder Scout. Ignore a signposted path over a stone wall stile on the left and at a T-junction of tracks, look out for the old cross base hidden in the wall by the left-hand gate ahead of you.

(7) Turn right at the T-junction and follow the track for a little under half a mile, passing Knapkin Hill Farm before you reach Castle Edge Road at the end of Broadhurst Edge Plantation.

(8) Turn right along the road. After a left-hand bend by the entrance to Castle Hill Farm, take a footpath on the left beside a gate, onto the golf course. Follow the wall on the left (with the course on your right) past the 9th tee.

At a corner, cross a stone stile to the right of a gate, then go through a squeeze stile in the wall on the right. Walk down the narrow field to emerge between two barns to another stile into Whitle.

(9) Turn right through a gate and follow the walled path ahead, which leads back to the golf course via another stile by a second gate. Follow the wall across the course and back toNew Mills Gold Club Clubhouse. (D/A)