A member of the public has reported spotting a “black” big cat on the Sandstone Trail while walking home from Beeston Castle.
The animal was spotted between Frodsham and Helsby, from where the long-distance footpath crosses a road next to ‘The Ridgeway‘ caravan park. It was seen walking slowly through private woodlands adjacent to the road.
Gregg told us: “I was returning from Beeston Castle on the Sandstone trail, as I approached Frodsham I crossed the road outside of ridgeway caravan park and continued in the direction for Frodsham Hill.
“As I crossed the road, there is some private woodland in which is where I spotted the big cat after initially thinking it was a domestic dog.
“It was walking slowly but went from sight before able to take a photo.”
Gregg’s encounter occured at around 2:15 PM on the afternoon of Sunday 1st August.
Back in March, a Frodsham couple made national headlines after catching a black big cat on their home CCTV.
At the time, Chris told us: “We found a dead chicken late morning and then looking back at our CCTV saw a mysterious black animal on our paddock at around 6.20am.
The chicken body was found on the path that this animal takes and there are a few footprints left behind too. It’s black and too big to be a house cat.”
The animal can be seen emerging from the top right of the video around 18 seconds in. A close-up then shows the animal again around 50 seconds in.
Weeks later in early April, another big cat was spotted in the town on Tarvin Road. More recently, there have been multiple sightings of a big cat from the M56 by drivers in the vicinity of Frodsham.
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Last month, a big cat was caught on camera at Chester FC’s Deva Stadium following a series of sightings around the city.
On Friday 16th April, someone spotted what could have been a puma near Blacon, at a location well under a mile from four other recent sightings. Just along the canal to the North, a large, black animal with a very long tail was spotted twice within a week, around the abandoned Old Oaks Golf Course and the Countess of Chester Country Park.
These sightings followed a 4ft-long cat “with a great big tail” being spotted twice in one night in fields bordering Blacon, behind Sealand Road Asda.
Prior to this, on the other side of the city centre, a member of the public reported an encounter with a “growing and snarling” creature in Huntington’s Caldy Valley Nature Park, while in December, a big cat was caught on camera prowling Chester Meadows.
Big cats have also been spotted across the Wirral.
As seen with Llandundo’s now-famous goats, who have taken to roaming the town’s deserted streets during the coronavirus lockdowns, it’s likely that the reduced levels of human activity over the last year is encouraging big cats to roam further from the hills into more populated areas.
When big cats were banned as pets in the 1970s, it was legal to release them into the countryside to avoid expensive rehoming costs. Owners from across the UK travelled to areas like Wales to release their cats in the remote environment, where small but significant populations have thrived ever since.
