Platform 2c has a handy new 8-mile circular tour of Congleton and Mow Cop on foot, recently undertaken and photographed (summer 2022). The walk starts at Congleton Station, which is reachable from Stoke-on-Trent by train. I think I looked at it some years ago, and had thought that it wasn’t accessible via a direct service. Or perhaps it was then costly to cross the border from the West Midlands into the North West. But there’s a quick direct hourly service now, and you can apparently get up there and back for a fiver if you book ahead. Brilliant.
If you want to also visit Congleton itself, note that the station is a good mile and a half from the start of the core of the town centre’s main shopping areas. I can’t immediately see any fabulous off-road direct walking-route from the station into the town centre. The Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan: Congleton (2021) suggests that those arriving by rail trudge alongside a main road, albeit on a mostly segregated path, while dodging cyclists…
The red line is the current station-centre walk.
Not ideal. Though it looks like you might instead be able to go west along the canal towpath, and then on rural footpaths to reach Howey Lane and Moody Street and thus into the town centre. That would be a longer two-and-a-half mile dog’s-leg, though, and with an uncertain level of muddiness. This is just a theoretical suggestion to explore, so don’t blame me if it lands you in a quagmire lane heavily trafficked by tractors and scrambler-bikes from the local council estate.
You might also be able to thread your way through to the top of the town centre, as a walker, via the Station – then a short stretch of Canal – then the road seen above Bollin Drive? Here seen as another hypothetical route marked in blue.
Canal Street / Canal Road looks like a nice short-cut here, but isn’t — it is noted on the Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan as a busy road with ‘heavy traffic’.
The unspecified “future routes” marked on the council map suggest things may improve in future.