Royden Park

A shade under thirty-seven hectares of woodland, grass and water on the west side of the Wirral, with two surfaced waymarked trails straight from the car park and a cafe at the end of them. The longest trip of any walk we list.

Royden Park sits at Frankby, over on the west side of the Wirral — just under eight miles from us in a straight line, which makes it the longest trip of any walk on this list. The entrance is off Hillbark Road, near the junction with Montgomery Hill, and there is parking down both sides of the main drive. The park itself is open dawn till dusk, all year round.

It is a shade under thirty-seven hectares of woodland, grass and water, designated a Site of Biological Importance, with two meres — Roodee Mere, which is there all year, and Frankby Mere, which is seasonal. There is a cafe open seven days a week, a visitor centre with exhibition space, picnic areas and toilets, a walled garden open weekdays from nine until four, and miniature railways. You can fish the lake with a permit.

For walking, the two obvious routes are the Woodpecker and the Common Lizard trails. Both are accessible footpath trails, both start and finish at the main car park, and both are waymarked with interpretation boards along the way, so neither needs a map. Step off them and the council's own plan says the terrain is uneven and muddy in places, which is fine in boots and less fine in trainers.

On dogs, we will be straight with you: Wirral publishes nothing at all about them for this site — no lead requirement, no dog-free area, nothing on the council's page for the park. What the council's management plan does say is that the event field is popular with local dog walkers, and that there are dog waste bag dispensers in the main car parks and 'clean it up' signs set into the ground in three places. We read that as dogs being a normal part of the place, with the usual expectation that you pick up after them.

Worth knowing

• —The council publishes no dog rules for this site at all — no lead requirement, no dog-free area — and there is no borough-wide dog control order in Wirral's current list of Public Spaces Protection Orders. That is an absence of rules rather than a licence: the council's own management plan names dog fouling and dogs off leads as the biggest concerns raised by park users across Wirral.
• —Parking is charged, and the charging hours and the park's opening hours are not the same thing. Charges run 8am to 6:30pm every day except Christmas Day, while the park is open dawn till dusk — so an early winter walk can be free and a summer evening one cannot. An annual permit for the country parks is £120, and Blue Badge holders park free.
• —Toilets are open 9am to 4pm 'most days', and the plan is honest that it depends on staff being in. Worth not building the trip around them.
• —Thurstaston Common next door is a separate site — an SSSI under its own management — so nothing the council publishes about the park carries over once you cross onto it. We would read the signs there rather than assume.

Details from Wirral Council — Royden Park. Also from Wirral Council — Royden Park management plan 2022–2027, Wirral Council — parking charges in country parks.