Hi Joel,
I'm afraid you won't see a smooth snake up here, they're restricted to a handful of sites in dorset and surrey.
There is a population of sand lizards along the sefton coast so they're a possibility. You can see them at Chester zoo also as they have a successful captive breeding programme for them.
The 4 more common spp. are around I'm sure. The best thing to do is contact the different Amphibian and Reptile groups near you.
Here's the link to their contacts page
http://www.arg-uk.org.uk/contacts.htm
I'm doing the same thing at the moment with groups over in yorkshire but haven't managed to get out anywhere yet. There is a big recording scheme called Make the Adder Count, which is trying to find out if they are still around at sites where they historically used to be. A lot of this monitoring happened after emergence from hibernation when they are more visable as they're preoccupied with breeding. Unfortunately this time has now passed and the adders will prob be more dispersed through their habitat but are still around.
Grass snakes are quite visable at the moment as they are looking for egg laying sites in compost piles
Just remembered this link-http://www.cheshire-biodiversity.org.uk/menu-home.htm
If you have any luck and find out where to go to try and spot them, please let me know as I'm really interested in searching for reptiles too.
Good luck Joel
