The GM Ringway is a relatively new 200 mile, twenty stage, long distance footpath that starts in Manchester city centre before circumnavigating Greater Manchester. It is also the only recognised long distance footpath that I can pretty much join from my doorstep here in Burnage. As one of my goals for my post-op 2025 I decided to walk the route on an ad hoc basis over the course of the year taking advantage of the fact it is designed to be accessible by public transport. The official stage I’d be walking ran from East Didsbury through to Bramhall but I added an extra mile or so by wandering down to the banks of the Mersey from home. The Ringway website describes this leg as being 7.2 miles long with around one hundred metres of ascent so I wasn’t anticipating anything too strenuous to kick off my circumnavigation. The Mersey had reached it’s highest recorded level only a few weeks before wreaking havoc on nearby hotels, my own rugby club and allotments. A feature of this leg of the walk would be tattered plastic flapping in the trees, this ragged rubbish showed just how high the waters had risen but provided depressing evidence of the scale of waste plastic in our waterways. Such is the scale of the problem on this section alone that I imagine it will be many years before those trees are plastic free.
Leaving the Mersey I crossed the M60 busy with roaring traffic and turned left into Abney Hall Park. The hall itself dates from Victorian times and has notable associations with crime novelist Agatha Christie who wrote the novel After the funeral whilst staying there as a guest of her nephew James Watt. I wandered unmurdered through the park catching a great view of a Greater Spotted Woodpecker on one of the many feeders dangling from trees close to the path. I was too early for the cafe to be open so continued on into Cheadle where I stopped for a coffee. I had looked at buying a second hand bookshop in Cheadle during Covid but the owners had decided to sell it to friends who they thought would be more likely to keep it the way it was, I went to visit only to find it’s no longer a bookshop….so much for their plan!
I left Cheadle on a footpath along the banks of Micker Brook winding through woodland, crossing busy roads, manouvering around sports centres and old mills and proving very popular with dog walkers, a good proportion of which proved to have no control whatsoever over their dogs. In spite of an overwhelmingly urban feel there were plenty of birds in the hedgerows and Snowdrops and Catkins hinted that Spring wasn’t too far away. Crossing beneath a spectacular viaduct Micker Brook appeared to become Lady Brook and I followed it down to the duck ponds and manicured gardens of Bramhall Hall. The original hall dates from around the fourteenth century and was built by the Davenport family who owned it for around five hundred years. It’s a beautiful building with a fabulous black and white timber exterior and many notable features. I perused the history in the Visitors Centre before pressing on on the final leg of my walk for the day. The path wiggled along between the golf course and the steep sided valley of Carr Wood before emerging into Bramhall itself, a busy, prosperous town full of elderly people bustling about their business. Having just missed the hourly bus back to Didsbury I sought refuge in The Crown and Conspirator where I enjoyed a pint by a cracking log fire before the aforementioned bus conveyed me back to Didsbury.
Day 1 8.95 miles.
