During the Coronavirus crisis of 2020, the UK Government imposed a period of "Lockdown", effectively preventing driving out to the countryside for the purposes of hiking.  This was later relaxed to permit up to five minutes of driving, and then again to permit a period of driving that was "less than the period of exercise"!  No time limit was ever imposed on the exercise itself.  In one daily press briefing, Michael Gove did suggest a maximum of one hour in answer to a journalist's question, but this never became a legal requirement, and never appeared in the guidance on the Government website.

I decided it was better not to flirt with the various and changing rules on what driving you could do to permit exercise.  Sitting on a summit could not be considered a justifiable part of that exercise anyway, and I could perfectly well walk from my front door into some fabulous countryside.  Some of these circular routes were quite lengthy and could take a few hours, but all parts of each remained within 4 miles of my home address (mostly within 2 miles in fact), no car journeys were involved whatsoever, plus the routes involved very quiet public footpaths on which it was rare to meet a single other person.

"Lockdown 7" was added after an easing of the restrictions that re-enabled car travel to a walk start-point, as were Lockdown walks 10 to 14 and 17 to 20.  The third period of Lockdown that commenced January 2021 brought back the tougher restrictions, and so walking for me returned to being exclusively from my front door. 

Please be considerate of local residents and landowners when using these routes.  Always follow the countryside code, and keep dogs under close control, especially when passing private gardens.  If you find the site useful and/or enjoy one of these walks, feel free to "buy me a beer"!

Some of the routes above proved useful for anyone in the Macclesfield area taking part in "March the Month" - a challenge to hit 11,000 steps each day in the month of March 2021, to raise funds and awareness for Prostate Cancer UK.  The 11K number is in respect of the amount of lives lost to prostate cancer annually in the UK.  More information on the link below: