Start at the Britannia pub end and keep the river on your right. That’s the whole navigation briefing. The prom is four and a bit kilometres of uninterrupted riverside tarmac, and what it lacks in surprises it makes up for in sky — on a clear evening you can watch weather arrive over the Welsh hills a full half hour before it reaches you.
The first stretch past the Festival Gardens is the busiest, and honestly the least interesting. Push through. Once you’re past the marina the crowds thin to dog walkers and the odd angler, and the path opens out so wide you’ll forget you’re twenty minutes from the city centre.
About halfway there’s a bench facing directly across to Eastham — sit on it. This is the widest point of the river on the walk, and at low tide the mud flats bring in oystercatchers and, if you’re lucky, a curlew or two. Nobody told us Liverpool was a birdwatching city either. It is.
The turnaround at Otterspool itself has toilets, a café that keeps honest hours, and an ice cream van that does not. Come back the way you came, or climb up through Otterspool Park to Aigburth Road and get the 82 bus home — no shame in it, the return leg into a headwind is a different walk entirely.
We measured the route twice, in both directions. The GPX is the clockwise version, which keeps the wind at your back on the way home more often than not.