Trentabank car park is run by the Peak District National Park Authority and sits next to the Trentabank ranger centre in Macclesfield Forest (SK11 0NS, but the postcode covers a wide area, so use the map directions above). It has 35 spaces and public toilets. Charges apply from 9AM to 6PM every day: about £2.10 for up to an hour, £3.40 for up to two hours, £5.50 for up to four hours or £6.60 all day, and Blue Badge holders park free. You can pay at the machine or with the RingGo app (location 51726). The machine should take cards and coins, but some recent visitors have found it only takes coins, so it's worth carrying change. On busy days a refreshments van parks here. Check the latest prices here.

Forest Chapel, officially the Church of St Stephen, stands on its own on the hillside at the eastern edge of Macclesfield Forest. The first chapel here was built in 1673. When the Bishop of Chester, Francis Gastrell, looked into it in about 1720, he found it had never been consecrated, and it was almost completely rebuilt in the 1830s. It's built of sandstone with a stone-slate roof and a tower with a saddleback roof and a single bell, and the inside is very plain.

Every August the chapel holds a rushbearing. Before churches had paved floors, rushes were strewn over the bare earth to keep it clean and sweet smelling, and replacing them became a special occasion in the parish year. Most churches gave the custom up in the 1600s, but at Forest Chapel it has carried on, and written records of the ceremony go back to the 18th century.

The service is held on the first Sunday after 12 August, a date said to be linked to the start of the shooting season on the Glorious Twelfth, when Lord Derby came to nearby Crag Hall. Rushes are laid along the path and down the nave, and sheaves of rushes and flowers decorate the gate and porch. Part of the service, including the sermon, still takes place outside in the churchyard, a habit said to have started when the chapel was too small for everyone. In the late 1940s more than 800 people came.

Most of the trees you walk through today are conifers planted between about 1930 and 1950 to protect the water in the reservoirs. But the name is far older. Macclesfield Forest is the last large remnant of the Royal Forest of Macclesfield, a hunting ground of the Earls of Chester. It was already under forest law by 1160, and at its largest it covered about 80 square miles, from the River Goyt in the north and west to the River Dane in the south.

Forest law protected the deer, and clearing the land for farming was, in theory, against the law, although in practice people were often fined and allowed to keep what they had cleared. In 1237 the earldom passed to the Crown, and from 1354 to 1376 the stewards of the Black Prince used parts of the forest to run a cattle business with more than 700 animals, including a pasture at Midgley in Wildboarclough.

Little by little the forest gave way to farms, and by the 17th century it had all but disappeared. Traces are still there if you know where to look: the remains of a medieval deer pound survive on Toot Hill, and an old tradition says that poachers caught in the forest were hanged at a gallows nearby, which may explain the name of the Hanging Gate pub. Red deer still live in the forest today and are sometimes seen drinking at Trentabank Reservoir early in the morning.