Cheshire East Cycling Routes
Wilmslow Park
These pages describe cycling routes in Cheshire East, typically starting from Wilmslow.
Cheshire East is a location that offers a fantastic landscape for cycling, with terrain ranging from the flat Cheshire plain to iconic climbs in the Peak District.
Most of the routes have alternative start points listed, typically at other train stations in the area.
For those of you living in Greater Manchester, then options include cycling out via Wilmslow and following the routes or taking the train to Wilmslow or Macclesfield.
The cycling routes are categorised according to the severity of the climbs within the routes.
Green Routes have no climbs and are aimed at beginners and young families.
Blue Routes have only short or shallow climbs.
Red Routes include much longer climbs (and some fairly steep ones)
Black Routes include the toughest climbs in the county.
MTB Routes include a variety of off-road trails.
For a more detailed explanation of the grading - see lower down on this page.
Click the map opposite to show more detail.
Hill Difficulty Classification
The method I have used to classify the difficultly of the areas hills is from www.climbbybike.com , which has developed its own formula; the climbbybike difficulty index.
CLIMBBYBIKE-INDEX: (H*100/D)*2 + H²/D + D/1000
Whereby: H = difference in height; D = distance in meters;
Therefore short and shallow hills score low; steep and long hills score high; long but no-so-steep hills (or steep but short hills) score somewhere in the middle.
Using the above index method and applying to the local hills (together with the collective hill-climbing experiences with my cycling friends) the colour grading is based on:
- Black: Index score greater than 30
- Red: Index score greater than 15, but less than 30
- Blue: Index score greater than 5, but less than 15
- Green: Index score less than 5
Here is an example of how this works in practice:
- A climb ascending 600 feet over 1 mile of road scores 45, therefore Black
- A climb ascending 600 feet over 2 miles of road scores 25, therefore Red
- A climb ascending 300 feet over 1 mile of road scores 18, therefore also Red
- A climb ascending 300 feet over 2 miles of road scores 11.5, therefore Blue
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