East Cheshire Ramblers is a group within the UK-wide Ramblers organisation. Most of our members live in the area of north-east Cheshire centred around Macclesfield and Wilmslow. We organise several walks each week which are generally in our local area or the Peak District but are occasionally in North Wales, the Yorkshire Dales or the Lake District. We have an active footpath maintenance group and our members undertake an annual survey of all the public footpaths in our area, reporting faults to the county council rights of way department.
All members of the Ramblers, whatever their local group, are welcome to join our walks; if you aren’t a member you can try up to three of our walks before committing yourself to joining. You can join the Ramblers by clicking on the link at the bottom of this page.
Our walks are graded by length
- stroller – up to four miles
- short – up to seven miles but rarely less than five
- medium – between eight and eleven miles
- long – more than eleven miles but rarely more than fifteen
and degree of difficulty
- easy – mostly flat walking on good paths
- moderate – this covers the majority of walks; there might well be a steep hill or two but it will generally be on good paths in undulating terrain
- strenuous – expect a fair bit of uphill walking, maybe even some mild scrambling. We might leave paths for open country but not invariably.
Walk leaders will often consider that their walks don’t fall neatly into these categories so expect to see moderate/strenuous or easy/moderate walks.
Here are a few points to consider before joining your first East Cheshire Ramblers walk.
- all our walks, even the short ones, are quite long by the standards of anybody who doesn’t do much walking so if that’s you start with a short walk and work up to longer ones
- you should come properly equipped with walking boots and suitable outdoor clothing. If the walk leader considers that anyone is very badly equipped they can refuse to take them on the walk.
- you should bring enough to eat and drink for the expected duration of the walk. An overall speed of two miles per hour is a good rule of thumb so a six mile walk can be expected to take three hours and a twelve mile walk six hours. Those figures aren’t guaranteed, though – over estimate if anything.
- well-behaved dogs may be able to come on walks at the leader’s discretion but quite often we will be walking in areas where dogs are specifically excluded. If you would like to bring your dog along please use our contact form to ask the membership secretary several days in advance. Click here to see the contact form.