“The area is so lovely and slightly eerie that you’ll want to linger at least until the moon rises over the rocks”

Myths, wizards, Kevin De Bruyne and Armani in the charity shop: welcome to the strange neighbourhood of Alderley Edge…

The lemon drizzle cake from the Wizard tearoom was pretty good, but I still maintain (and for the benefit of any newcomers to Country Walking who haven’t heard me say this yet) that the finest end-ofwalk refreshment I know of is the bacon butty served up at the National Trust’s Nimmings Wood Café in the Clent Hills in Worcestershire. Still open, still wonderful.

ICAN’T RESIST A good charity shop. Jigsaws, Michael Palin audiobooks, tam o’shanters: only the middle aisle of Aldi, with its chainsaws and sombreros can compete for richness and variety of wares.

But if you want a more refined and sophisticated ‘chazzer’ experience, try Wilmslow in Cheshire.

A few years back I was walking down its high street when, on a whim, I popped into the Oxfam and the very first item I saw was an Armani suit for £100, closely followed by a first edition of The Hobbit (offers only). For this is a magical land, Cheshire’s Golden Triangle, home of wizards, former members of Slade, Premier League footballers and, I’m glad to say, a few hundred pairs of muddy boots every weekend that have nothing to do with Old Trafford or the Etihad.

I’m always on the lookout for places I can get a Saturday afternoon stomp within easy reach of MediaCity Salford when I’ve closed the mike on my weekend breakfast radio show. So the other week, I was happy to take up an offer from my friend Helen (producer of the excellent Mary Anne Hobbs show on 6Music) that we had a walk on Alderley Edge.

I didn’t know it and I was keen to find out if it was just as rich and strange as rumour has it. Rich? Well, as my charity shop Armani suit find attests (it didn’t quite fit, by the way) this is a well-heeled place. They say if you were to draw a triangle from Alderley Edge and Wilmslow to Prestbury you would find more millionaires than anywhere else in Britain. Celebs abound hereabouts, from Robbie Savage to my chum and Slade legend Noddy Holder. David Beckham could once be seen walking his Rottweilers down to the jewellers of a weekend. So yes, ‘rich’ is fair.

As for the ‘strange’ part? Well, if you know your British mythology, you’ll know that legend has it a farmer from nearby Mobberley encountered an old man clad in a grey and flowing garment on Alderley Edge itself, a huge sandstone escarpment that was our destination and a walkers’ honeypot. The old wizardy guy (Merlin, obvs) showed him a cave containing the sleeping King Arthur and his knights of the round table, waiting for England’s hour of need. The story may or may not be real, but the British writer Alan Garner certainly is. He has written many books about the fantastical and occult dimensions of Alderley Edge, such as Elidor and The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, and is the reason many people visit here to soak up what is certainly an atmospheric spot. The land encompassing the edge was owned until 1948 by the Pilkington family, the famed glazing dynasty (‘Hey, you weren’t made at Pilks you know,’ is a popular Lancashire exhortation, levelled at people who block the view at the football or kids who stand in front of the telly). In that year, they donated the land to the National Trust. Today you’re pretty much free to wander at will. If you have access to the CW archive you’ll find fine articles and route cards to take you there [October 2016 in particular – ed].

But even if not, you can’t really go wrong; the edge is criss-crossed with excellent, well-marked trails. We ended up making an afternoon stroll into an 11-mile hike but the area is so lovely and slightly eerie that you’ll want to linger at least until the moon rises over the rocks and the owls start to hoot.

Sadly, the pub named after the Merlin encounter, The Wizard, is shuttered and boarded now, but the tearoom at the back is still open, and here everyone from cashmere-clad Cheshire Set types to mudspattered wanderers can find shared delight in a mug of hot chocolate and a piece of cake. Helen and I opted for a slice of lemon drizzle cake and a flat white, and wandered back down the hill to the station looking at the gated mansions and hoping for a glimpse of a mirrored top hat or Kevin De Bruyne.

I’d warmly recommend it for any north-westerners reading. And if you stop off in Wilmslow on the way back, you can pop into Sue Ryder for a jigsaw and a Louis Vuitton holdall to take it home in.

Hear Stuart on Radcliffe and Maconie, BBC 6 Music, weekends, 7am to 10am. More from Stuart on page 32.