Rivington Pike is the most prominent landmark on the West Pennine Moors, a modest but shapely hill topped by an eighteenth-century stone tower that can be seen from much of Lancashire on a clear day. The walk up from Rivington village takes around forty minutes at an easy pace, following well-worn paths through heather and bracken with views opening up steadily as you climb. The summit rewards the effort with a panorama that on good days reaches to the Irish Sea to the west and the Pennines to the east.
The tower itself is a simple square structure, locked but accessible at the base for photographs. A reservoir complex built by Liverpool Corporation in the nineteenth century fills the valley below, and the whole landscape has a managed, slightly melancholy quality typical of upland water-catchment areas. The Rivington terraced gardens lie on the wooded slopes below the pike and can be combined with the summit walk in a half-day circuit that takes in both the open moorland and the hidden garden landscape.