One of my friends has moved over there, so doesn’t know the area that well. So we were going to do some days out on bikes over there. Any ideas.
I’ve ridden the wessenden res and over March haigh.

Maybe even above Delph area ?

Thanks

Marsdenite here. Favourite route at the minute is:

Up Old Mount Road from Marsden
Cut off road section using Standedge trail (technically cheeky, but used by horses and vehicles)
Past reservoir by road and left on BW down towards Diggle
Straight on down track after gate
Along canal or road to get to Sandy Lane
Turn right along Long Lane
Left at top to go down Lark Hill Lane
Cross straight over main road to go down into Delph
Up Dark Lane to Broad Lane (there’s a BW option but is a slog through a grassy field)
Take rocky track on right down to end of road atGrange
Cross straight over road and take track down to brook
Either a) loop back on yourself to climb Dark Lane again, this time continuing along Broad Lane rather than taking the rocky track; or b) make your way to Low Gate Lane (west of Castelshaw Upper Reservoir) and climb to crossroads with Broad Lane.
Climb Moor Lane
Left down PBW
Straight over road and climb Dowry Road
Right at top and right again at end to drop back to main road
Left to climb main road
Take BW on right down to Close Gate Bridge, Marsden
Have a pint or two in the Riverhead

willykay clough (or is that what you meant by March haigh?)

qtips route is a good one. You can add in the stuff round the Ogden reservoirs by turning left on the PBW at the end of Dowry Road, there’s some nice stuff out that way. Sadly the National Trust have recently **** even more of the packhorse road down March Haigh/Eastergate; I’ve not ridden it yet myself but apparently only the last section is now free from massive stone flags and no doubt they’ll be bollocksing that up in due course too. 🙁

willykay clough (or is that what you meant by March haigh?)

Yeah, that’s March Haigh, or Eastergate, or the Packhorse. I’ve never heard a local call it Willikay Clough…

If you head out towards Meltham there’s quite a few bits that you can link up into a big loop ending up at the top of Wessenden, we ride variations on that regularly. Nice and weatherproof, so perhaps better for a wet day, Wessenden gets pretty lousy with dopey ramblers on sunny weekend days.

There’s a few other fun bits and bobs but they’re mostly cheeky. The Strava heatmap is your friend there.

I blame benji haworth

thats the route name in the guide

Yeah, that was the first time I saw that name used too. To be fair, that’s what the bottom bit of it is called on the OS map.

There are several local mountain bike challenge routes around the area. These can be cut and pasted at will to create some very nice routes