Looking at relocating from bucks to somewhere south/east of Chester.

What’s the riding like up there?

Anyone got any negatives for the area?

The Cheshire plains are very flat. So immediately south or east of Cheshire is river floodplain, can be very claggy / clayey. There is Delamere and Llandegla for organised trails, and all the further afield places in a day trip (from Lee Quarry / Rivington / Peak District to the east/north-east and the Snowdonia centres to the west). For nice cross-country type riding consider the Clwydian Range https://www.ridenorthwales.co.uk/agents/the-clwyds/

The areas into the Cheshire Plains are very ‘nice’, typically middle class who commute (or one of the family commutes) to the big city jobs, or large estate / land owners. It is essentially ‘rural’ with very few places having a good bus service and most kids commute to their schools unless you live in a big village. For the type of work available in the immediate area, typically call centres, industrial plants (Airbus, Vauxhall, Tata, Stanlow/Runcorn), the rural bits south and east of Chester are expensive for the area. Having said that every area will have social housing provision and there are stark differences between different villages.

If you are looking immediately south on the River Dee do check for flood risk even if far from the river. And be aware traffic can be atrocious, no matter where you are commuting to/from, there are a lot of people commuting across the region and it makes rush hour awful. But if you can work from home it’s lovely!

I have nothing to offer here but what great info from konagirl 🙂

Watch last weeks location location location. They were looking around the villages between Wrexham and Chester.

@konagirl epic response thanks! Where we are now is super flat with clay that turns from rock to glue after 5 mins rain so used to that. I typically have to drive for halfway decent riding off road and my local is closed for the foreseeable so good there are several options in a day! Looking far enough to the east that flood from the Dee won’t be an issue.

Very good. I grew up near Llandegla and still have friends who live on the England/Wales border and in Chester. I don’t know enough about the places further east to comment, only visited for e.g. weddings at places like Peckforton castle. Obviously worth spending a few weekends up there to get the lay of the land, while the Mersey Estuary is very industrial, to the south it’s nice and rural.

Tons of riding round Stoke and just to the north. Macc forest, Gradbach, Mow Cop, Hanchurch.
Degla’s your local for Chester. Plenty of shitty bridelway bashing but it’s all flat crapness as far as the eye can see.

It’s the land of aero road bike. If I lived there the MTB would probably get used once a month max. The lanes are nice and quiet though, very popular with the roadie clubs and TT scene