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West Kirby

Set beside the Dee estuary and looking across to the Welsh mountains, West Kirby was just a small fishing village until the railway link with Liverpool was established in the 1880s. Today, it’s a bustling seaside town with some 28,000 inhabitants. A big attraction here is the West Kirby Marine Lake, a 52-acre man-made saltwater lake. With a maximum depth of 5 feet it offers a degree of safety unobtainable on the open sea. Courses in sailing, windsurfing and canoeing are available at the Wirral Sailing Centre.

West Kirby is well-known to birdwatchers and naturalists because of the Hilbre Islands, part-time islands that can be reached at low tide across Dee Sands. Permits (free) from the Wirral Borough Council are required to visit the main island where there is a resident warden. Two smaller islands, Middle Eye and the tiny Little Eye, do not require permits. The latter is notable for its impressive number of wader roosts.

West Kirby is also the starting point for the Wirral Way, a 12-mile long linear nature reserve and country park created mostly from the trackbed of the old West Kirby to Hooton railway. When it was opened in 1973 it was one of the first Country Parks in Britain. The local council has also produced a series of circular walks based around the former stations along the line. One of these, Hadlow Road Station, a short distance from the centre of Willaston, is especially interesting. The station first saw service in 1856 but hasn’t seen a train since 1962, but everything here is spick and span, the signal box and ticket office apparently ready for action, a trolley laden with milk churns waiting on the platform. Restored to appear as it would have been on a typical day in 1952, the station’s booking office still has a pile of pre-decimal change at the ready, including silver sixpences, half-crowns and eight-sided threepenny pieces.