The Goyt rises on the moors of Axe Edge, near the River Dane and the Cat and Fiddle Inn. The area is known as the Upper Goyt Valley.
It crosses the old Buxton/Macclesfield road at Derbyshire Bridge which was the old boundary between Derbyshire and Cheshire. Then it reaches an old packhorse bridge which was moved when Errwood Reservoir was built in the 1960s. Further downstream there is another reservoir, the Fernilee Reservoir.
The Goyt then passes through Taxal, Whaley Bridge and New Mills before joining the River Tame at Stockport.