Sandwell Valley Country Park is a surprising expanse of open countryside sitting between the M5 motorway, West Bromwich, and Birmingham. The park covers around 660 hectares and includes woodland, meadows, and the Forge Mill Lake nature reserve. It feels improbably rural given that it is surrounded by one of the densest urban areas in England.
The RSPB Sandwell Valley nature reserve within the park attracts a wide range of birds, and the lakes provide habitats for wildfowl and waders. Walking and cycling paths cross the valley, and the ruins of Sandwell Priory — a Benedictine house founded in the 12th century and dissolved in 1526, one of the first monastic houses dissolved in England — are visible in the park grounds. The park also contains the remains of Sandwell Hall, a Georgian mansion demolished in the 1920s after the land was bought by the local authority.