Walk the pinewoods and find the red squirrels

Look for prehistoric footprints exposed in the beach silts

Walk the dunes and listen for natterjack toads in spring

Follow the paths through the dunes to the beach for the view over the Irish Sea

The National Trust looks after the pinewoods and dunes at Formby Point, a Site of Special Scientific Interest and one of several places in Britain where red squirrels still survive, alongside natterjack toads in the dune slacks. The beach itself keeps something older: layers of silt that hold the footprints of people and of red deer, roe deer, wild boar, wolf and aurochs. In June 2016 more than fifty human footprints around 7,000 years old were uncovered here.

Formby: Red Squirrels, Pinewoods and 7,000-Year-Old Footprints

Visit The Beatles Story at the Royal Albert Dock, the museum opened in 1990

Go down into the Cavern Club on Mathew Street, rebuilt in 1984 on most of the site of the 1957 cellar where the Beatles played 292 times between 1961 and 1963

See Penny Lane and Strawberry Field, where the original red gates now stand inside the visitor centre opened in 2019

Take the National Trust tour of Mendips and 20 Forthlin Road, the childhood homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney

The original Cavern Club on Mathew Street opened on 16 January 1957, and the Beatles played it 292 times between 1961 and 1963; Brian Epstein first saw them there on 9 November 1961. It was filled in after it closed in 1973, and today's club, rebuilt in 1984, covers most of the same site. The Beatles Story at the Royal Albert Dock opened in 1990. Out in the suburbs are Penny Lane and the gates of Strawberry Field, and the National Trust takes visitors round Mendips and 20 Forthlin Road, the childhood homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

Liverpool: The Cavern, the Beatles Story and Strawberry Field

Visit the Museum of Liverpool at Pier Head, opened in 2011 to tell the story of the city and its people

Walk the Royal Albert Dock, opened in 1846 with its fireproof warehouses

Take the Mersey Ferry across the river from Pier Head, the ferry immortalised by Gerry and the Pacemakers in 1964

See the Three Graces at Pier Head — the Royal Liver Building, the Cunard Building and the Port of Liverpool Building

The Royal Albert Dock opened in 1846 with its fireproof warehouses; its Maritime and International Slavery museums are closed for redevelopment until about 2028, but the Museum of Liverpool, opened in 2011, stands at Pier Head. Along the waterfront at Pier Head stand the Three Graces — the Royal Liver Building, the Cunard Building and the Port of Liverpool Building — and the Mersey Ferry, which Gerry and the Pacemakers sang about in 1964, crosses from there.

Liverpool's Waterfront: The Albert Dock, the Three Graces and the Ferry

Walk Birkenhead Park, opened in 1847 as one of the world's first publicly funded parks, which inspired New York's Central Park

Walk Port Sunlight, the model village William Lever founded in 1888, and visit the Lady Lever Art Gallery

Look for birds at RSPB Burton Mere Wetlands on the Dee estuary

Walk the Wirral Way through Wirral Country Park, Britain's first country park

Birkenhead Park, opened in 1847, was one of the first publicly funded parks in the world, and it inspired New York's Central Park. William Lever founded Port Sunlight as a model village for his soap workers in 1888, and the Lady Lever Art Gallery stands at its heart. On the Dee side of the peninsula, the RSPB has its Burton Mere Wetlands, and the Wirral Way runs through Wirral Country Park, Britain's first country park.

The Wirral: Birkenhead Park and Port Sunlight

Visit Blackpool Tower, opened in 1894, and dance in the Tower Ballroom

Ride the Blackpool Tramway along the front, running since 1885

Ride the Big One at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, the amusement park that opened in 1896

See the Blackpool Illuminations, the autumn light display

Blackpool Tower opened in 1894, and Frank Matcham's Tower Ballroom beneath it in 1899; the tramway has run along the front since 1885, and the Pleasure Beach opened in 1896. The Illuminations were first switched on in 1879, and six miles of lights now run along the promenade from late August or early September until the first weekend of January.

Blackpool: The Tower, the Trams and the Illuminations

In the well crypt, look up at the carved boss above the spring, which shows six scenes from the life of St Winefride

Bathe in the pools at the permitted times: by tradition, pilgrims pass three times through the small pool by the spring while saying a decade of the Rosary, then kneel on St Beuno's stone in the outer pool

Find out which kings came as pilgrims: Richard II in 1398, Henry IV in 1403 after the Battle of Shrewsbury, and, according to the poet Tudur Aled, Edward IV

Compare the flow of the spring with Samuel Johnson's 1774 diary, which claimed 'one hundred tuns of water in a minute', and the 1859 measurement of 22½ tons a minute

The holy well at Holywell in Flintshire has drawn pilgrims since the Middle Ages, and it is the only sacred site in Britain whose pilgrimage tradition carried on unbroken through the Reformation. Legend says the spring rose where Winefride's head fell when Prince Caradoc beheaded her, and that St Beuno, her teacher, restored her to life, leaving only a thin white line around her neck.

St. Winefride's Well: The Lourdes of Wales

Walk the full circuit of the 130-acre zoo

Take the Lazy River boat ride round the Islands habitats

Find out how the Mottershead family built the place from 1931

George Mottershead and his family opened Chester Zoo in 1931, moving up from a market garden business near Crewe. It is now one of the largest zoos in the country at 130 acres, on a total holding of about 400, and it takes no government funding at all — it runs on visitors, of whom there were more than two million in 2019, making it the most visited wildlife attraction in Britain.

Chester Zoo: Britain's Most Visited Wildlife Attraction

Walk the beaver trails round the lochs at Barnluasgan and call in at the Argyll Beaver Centre

Find a dam, a lodge or gnawed stumps by the water

Come at dusk, when beavers are most likely to be out

Walk down to the harbour at Tayvallich on Loch Sween

Beavers were hunted out of Scotland some four hundred years ago, and in May 2009 the Scottish Beaver Trial made the first official release in Britain, eleven beavers into the lochs and woods of Knapdale, run by the Scottish Wildlife Trust and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland. More were released in 2010, and in November 2016 the Scottish Government ruled they could stay for good, with protected status as a native species. A further 21 were released between 2017 and 2019 to strengthen the population.

Knapdale: Britain's First Official Beaver Release

Sit in a hide for the afternoon kite feed

Count how many kites come in and look for a pale leucistic bird

Walk the farm trail up the hill behind the feeding ground

Walk into Rhayader, the market town on the upper Wye

By the 20th century the red kite was down to a handful of breeding pairs in mid Wales — every red kite in Britain today descends from that remnant or from later reintroductions. Gigrin Farm at Rhayader is where the local farmer began putting out meat for them, and it is now one of the best places in the country to see them: hundreds come in at feeding time each afternoon. About one in a hundred Welsh chicks hatches as a rare white leucistic bird, so it is worth watching for a pale one in the crowd.