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Four Parks Walk 26/03/2023

On a cool but sunny morning, nineteen strollers met at Aigburth Station and walked down Mersey Road to Otterspool prom. On the way, an entrance to River Oaks Meadow advertised a clean up of the estate which had taken place the previous day. If not for this poster we may have passed by unaware of the Meadow – I’ve done this numerous times. Originally the site of Riversdale College, the River Oaks Residents Association started to tidy up the grounds and transformed the derelict pond area into a multiple award winning site, holding community events in the surrounding meadow and woodlands. We made a note to explore it later for possible future walks. At the front, the tide was out on the Mersey and the sandbanks made it look as though you could walk across to Eastham! We turned and made our way to Otterspool Park where runners in the Liverpool Half Marathon were leaving the park to head back along the prom to the finish at the Pier Head. Deciding against joining the runners, we walked through the park passing under the railway bridge we’d arrived via. The path followed the course of the River Jordan flowing underground to the Mersey from Sefton Park Lake. We cheered on the marathon runners passing us and left the park at Jericho Lane which had been closed to traffic because of the race. This made it easy for us to cross the normally busy road. A subway then took us under the even busier Aigburth Road and into Sefton Park. Wordsworth would have been proud of the magnificent array of daffodils that greeted us here. We walked a short way alongside the lake before turning off to make the most of the daffs and then arriving at the Café for a short break. Refreshed with snacks, drinks and ice creams, we then made our way past the tennis courts and the, now bare, crocus border to the park gates. Windermere Terrace then took us into Princes Park where we followed the path along the edge of the lake. Tall rushes bordered the lake with swans, mallards, coots and moorhens swimming on it. Further on, we came to the grave of Judy the legendary donkey. Judy gave children rides round the lake and there are many stories about her. She is said to have saved fifteen youths from a capsized boat on the lake, swam in the Mersey, relaxed in Ye Hole In The Wall pub in Hackins Hey and opened the Liver Building in 1911 by chewing through a peanut butter smeared ribbon. In case you’re not sure about this – peanut butter was introduced to the UK in the 1930s. We left the park through the Sunburst Gates and made our way to Princes Boulevard. The boulevard begins with a tribute to Nelson Mandela and has numerous interpretive plaques along its length. The Ringo Starr mural can be seen from it in High Park Street opposite his birthplace in Madryn Street. An “L8” sculpture was formed by the addition of a letter L to a chain sculpture resembling the number 8. The chain sculpture represents the connection between a ship and its anchor. A plaque near the end shows nine places of worship visible from the spot. We left the boulevard and made our way to Upper Parliament Street with Cains Brewery visible in the distance, and down to St James Gardens below the Anglican Cathedral. Old gravestones have been replaced around the edges of the grounds. Particularly touching are the large numbers of recorded infant deaths. A Huskisson monument dates from 1836 and the only natural spring in Liverpool provides clean drinking water. A path through a gravestone lined tunnel brought us out to the Cathedral entrance where we went our separate ways for lunch.

Thanks to Brenda and John for organising, recce-ing and leading the walk.