Cheshire Hike 2024 will be postponed until 5th-6th October

For those that have been out walking in preparation for Cheshire Hike, it won’t have gone unnoticed the state some of our land is in.

Our routes team have spent every day over the past few weeks altering our routes between our start, basecamp and finish locations to avoid waterlogged fields, stiles surrounded by water, and slippy impassable towpaths. Two of our routes between basecamp and the finish have now become impossible to navigate without using lots of roads, and this is something we must avoid in the interests of safety.

As Scouts, we’re also thinking about our landowners. Across three routes, 850 young people will walk up to 60km across the weekend. We want to make sure we don’t significantly damage public footpaths through fields.

We have made the decision this morning to postpone Cheshire Hike until October this year, with the number one focus of ensuring our young people have one of their best adventures yet – an experience we can’t guarantee this April.

For some of you, Cheshire Hike not taking place in two weeks time will be incredibly disappointing, however our organisers have worked really hard over the last 24 hours to ensure it can still take place this year, on 5th-6th October, using the same Basecamp and Finish locations as we had planned.

With the summer in sight, the warmer weather will dry out the ground, and we can look forward to what will be a brilliant weekend for everyone.

For participants and parents, keep that practicing up. Your place remains yours. We’ve also released some additional places for October this morning, so for those that didn’t manage to secure a place, please do book on before they go. We’ll decouple all teams so that these can be joined up again nearer to the event, and we’ll be in touch over the summer with the finer details and key dates.

For leaders, your hard work encouraging and preparing our young people to take part makes Cheshire Hike the event it is. All of the bookings you’ve placed for young people remain, and we’ll let you know as we need more, nearer to October. In the meantime, keep them hiking and building up their experience.

For volunteers, thank you. We really appreciate the time you give up to make Cheshire Hike the event we’re all proud of. If you’re registered to volunteer, we’ll keep everything as it is for October – please let us know if anything needs amending.

A photo taken this week by our Pathfinder routes team.

A field during the Pathfinder+ Saturday route.

A photo taken this week by our Explorer routes team.

We’ll keep in regular communication over the next few months. Should you have any questions we haven’t answered, please feel free to reach out to [email protected].