Not Just Another Place – Longer Weekend Walk (Saturday 24 August 2024)

Walk leader – Noreen Martin

Number on walk – 10

Distance – 18 miles

Weather – Dry, sunny with a light breeze (Temp reached 20C).

10 LDWA members joined the walk.  Grey and overcast to start but this soon cleared and we enjoyed a dry, sunny and breezy day. A truly great circular walk in the Sefton (Merseyside) area on good paths, tracks and roads (minimal elevation). Some nice opportunities for coffee stops along the way, with lunch close to the beach at Waterloo by the Lakeside activity centre. A great days walking, and first time out leading a walk for me!

Highlights along the way included:

• St Helen Church, Sefton. The only grade 1 building in the borough of Sefton and one of the oldest Christian sites in Merseyside.
• St Helen’s Well probably a pre-Christian spring/pilgrimage site.
• Lunt Meadows with its vast range of water birds and wildlife on the man-made lakes and ponds created as a flood plain by the Environment Agency in 2014.
• A walk through the picturesque village of Ince Blundell, the oldest settlement in Sefton.
  The pretty village of Little Crosby where protestants are ‘vetted’ before they can take up residence in the village. (6.5m Cafe and W/C).
• A walk along the Sefton Coastal Path and its sea wall, with clear views of the Wirral peninsular and the mountains of Wales. (8.5m W/C charge).
• The 100 Iron men of Antony Gormley’s ‘Another Place ‘ (9.5 Cafe and W/C at baths).
• Passing by the former homes of Captain Edward John Smith, captain of the Titanic and his senior, Chairman and Managing Director of White Star Line, Joseph Bruce Ismay.
• A walk around Crosby Marina (10.5m Cafe and W/C).
• A walk through Rimrose Valley Country Park with its vast range of wildlife, woods and wild flower meadows (a former ‘tip’ transformed into public open space).
• And finally, returning along a stretch of the Liverpool and Leeds canal, and the Trans-Pennine Trail through Sefton Meadows part of the Liverpool Forest.