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(S/E) From the Churn Barn Holiday Letentrance, turn left along Maynestone Road. After 180 yards, take a footpath on the right-hand side, opposite a postbox in a barn wall.
Bear slightly left (North-East) down the field, keeping to the left of the low remains of a dry-stone wall. At the bottom of the valley, stepping stones across a boggy patch lead to a stone slab over the stream. Cross the bridge.
(1) Walk up the field opposite to a small ruined barn, then head diagonally left (North) across the field. When you reach the wall, turn right, uphill. Before the wall starts to climb in earnest, take a stile on the left, which leads to a path along a wall below Hollands House, heading up the valley towards a small stone barn. Pass the barn and continue in the same direction through a kissing gate (ignoring the walled green lane to your right).
(2) After another gate, you reach Monk’s Meadow Farm. Go through a wooden kissing gate by a horse-riding menage, turn immediately right and follow a path round the outside of the garden. When you reach the farm drive, turn right and walk up to the A624, crossing a cattle grid halfway up. At the main road, cross and take a few steps to the left.
Just before the Lamb Inn, take a footpath over a stile on the right then go through a gate by a small stone barn. Bear right between gorse bushes, away from the barn and below a small disused quarry, to the wall on the right-hand side of the field.
(3) Follow the wall uphill (waymarked on a fencepost). Beyond the first crossing wall, leave the field edge to follow an obvious path off to the left that heads up and around the shoulder of the hill.
The path curves right, past a small disused quarry, to a hand gate, beyond which it levels off and crosses the slope on a contour. In the next field, bear left to meet a track by a wall. Turn left along the track, which initially drops to cross the head of a valley.
In the corner of the field, climb a stile into a walled path that heads straight uphill. After a stiff climb of 70 metres vertically (300 metres on the ground) you reach a stile onto the Pennine Bridleway, and the major ascent of the walk is complete.
(4) Turn right through a gate and follow the track, with the summit of South Head in front of you and views of the Kinder Scout plateau opening up to your left. Follow the Bridleway as it skirts to the left below South Head (a path leads steeply up the slope to the right if you have the energy to climb to the summit and back).
Beyond PNFS sign no. 233 keep along the main bridleway as it climbs over rocks to the highest point of the walk. Follow the descending bridleway for 1⁄4 mile to its junction with Beet Road.
(5) Ignore this right-hand turn, continuing along the bridleway for a further 1⁄2 mile. Leave the Pennine Bridleway over a wall stile on the right (between two gates) and follow the right-hand side of the next field, along a descending wall-side path that develops into a track as it approaches Shireoaks Farm.
(6) Officially, the path enters the farmyard through two gates and then exits left through a third, but it's easier to bypass the farm altogether by bearing left before the first gate and passing through an old gateway through a wall below the farm buildings.
Turn left and follow the next wall as it curves downhill into the valley below Shireoaks, then leave the wall to follow a path directly down the brackeny slope to a railway bridge below the entrance to Cowburn Tunnel.
Cross the railway then follow the waymarked path as it bends left and right up to Malcoff. Go through a gate by a stone barn and walk out to the lane in Malcoff. Turn right (downhill).
Pass Roych Farm on the right and ignore a footpath on the left, continuing along the narrow lane until it crosses a stream.
(7) Leave the road over a stile on the left here and follow the stream round to the right. Cross a driveway and continue downstream to a slab bridge, where the path crosses and continues on the opposite bank. At Wash, the path passes to the right of a cottage and joins the road.
Turn right and cross the bridge. Walk past the telephone box and parking area then, when the road curves away from the stream, go through the barriers on the left and follow the stream to a footbridge.
Cross the bridge and follow the path up a hollow way beside a trickle of a side-stream, which the path crosses partway up.
(8) When a path crosses perpendicularly, turn right through a gate into a field. Walk along the top of the field and go through a gap into a second field. Walk towards the A6 bridge then, when the left-hand field edge bends left, strike out across the field to your right, to reach a gap on the opposite side.
Walk towards the viaducts of Chapel Milton, aiming just left of a gate at the top of the slight ridge. Beyond a gap in the wall and fence, head downhill and slightly left, behind an overgrown pond, to a gate into a lane. Turn right to the main road in Chapel Milton. Turn right past the phonebox then cross over and take the driveway (signposted "Tramway Trail").
(9) Cross the stream and pass under the viaducts into a field. Cross the field with the stream on your right to emerge through a car park by a mill building into Charley Lane.
Turn left for a short distance then right onto a footpath, crossing a small stone arched bridge over a pipeline. Follow the path along the stream and below a water treatment works to a small weir, where the path leaves the stream and climbs to join the former Peak Forest Tramway.
(10) Turn right along the Tramway and follow it past some new housing until you reach a road. Turn right (or left if visiting the pubs in Whitehough). Cross the Black Brook and walk up into Chinley village.
Continue straight along the B6062, past the Post Office and the village green. When the B-road bends right, cross over and go over the railway bridge ahead to the war memorial.
(11) Turn right along Maynestone Road and follow the lane for 700 yards back to Churn Barn Holiday Let.(S/E)
Association / Club / Walk leader
Moderate 
Visorando member
Easy 
