Visit Rimrose Valley Country Park to meet the wildlife on your doorstep

Rimrose Valley is an oasis of beautiful, wild green space surrounded by the dense urban environment of South Sefton. It’s used for recreation by a wide range of people, providing a space for football, walking, running and cycling – a green gym as well as a green lung for the surrounding urban areas.

CPRE’s walk in Rimrose Valley, organised to highlight the threat to this wonderful piece of countryside on the doorstep, saw over 100 walkers come together to demonstrate their opposition to Highways England’s plan to build a dual carriageway through the entire extent of the Park to carry freight from the Port of Liverpool to the motorway at Switch Island. 

The three-mile walk was attended by people of all ages and backgrounds in bright warm autumn sunshine. Local stewards described vividly all aspects of the parks history, its biodiversity, and the huge health benefits it provides. The walkers met with dog walkers, joggers, cyclists, narrow boaters and bird watchers, all who wander through the park every day. It was an was an opportunity to pick blackberries from the hedgerows, and apples from the trees and the children who came had a great time climbing the trees.

Rimrose Valley Country Park is bounded by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal to the East and the railway line that connects to Southport in the west. Since 1993 the green space has been dramatically improved and is well used now as a local recreational and educational resource for local people. It is an important wildlife habitat, with two sites of Special Local Biological Interest and the Brookvale Local Nature Reserve.

Its crucial value has been to keep green land permanently open and in preventing Crosby and Litherland joining and becoming one vast built up area. As well as preventing urban sprawl Green Belts make urban areas so much better places to live in, they offer so much to those who live in more densely built urban communities, often referred to as the green lungs in urban areas that make life so much more tolerable.

To find out about visiting Rimrose Valley and events taking place, visit http://www.rimrosevalleyfriends.org/

For an update on the campaign to protect Rimrose Valley Country Park, why not listen to the latest podcast from the Save Rimrose Valley campaign group, featuring our Chief Exec Crispin Truman: