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Can the 'Slow Ways' project change how we travel?

Slow Ways, launched earlier this year – and itself slowed by the summer lockdown – wants to reclaim walking as a mode of transport as well as a leisure activity - Getty
Slow Ways, launched earlier this year – and itself slowed by the summer lockdown – wants to reclaim walking as a mode of transport as well as a leisure activity - Getty

Country folk like to drive their Subaru Foresters very fast. I’m not sure why: the excitement of the open road, the uneventfulness of daily life, the opportunity to paralyse a walker obliged to use the tarmac in order to get to the next stile?

My home town, Totnes – which prides itself on (at least the media loves to bestow upon it), a rustic, organic, nature-loving brand-image – is strewn with rat-runs, lanes littered with blind bends and summits, and throbbing bypasses. While I have logged some pleasurable semi-suburban hikes during lockdown, for me to travel on foot to the beach at Paignton – only five miles away – I’d have to brave long stretches of murderous hedgerow-shadowed back roads or else embark on a meandering tramp through clay-clodding fields of sheep, bulls and men in wax jackets aiming things at birds.

Or so I’d thought.

The real obstacle is a lack of information, according to Dan Raven-Ellison, who is developing a walker-friendly map of the whole of Great Britain – and needs volunteers to help him join the dots.

Raven-Ellison, from Hanwell, West London, had the idea while walking across all of Britain’s cities and national parks for an earlier project.

“When you’ve walked across as much as the UK as I have, you see all that’s good and all that could be better about our footpaths.

“I had a kind of epiphanic moment on a walk from Salisbury to Winchester, on the Pilgrims’ Way, when I realised a lot of people were perfectly happy doing 20- or even 30-kilometre walks for recreational purposes but that we had lost the culture of using footpaths to visit family or friends or to get to work.”

Slow Ways, launched earlier this year – and itself slowed by the summer lockdown – wants to reclaim walking as a mode of transport as well as a leisure activity. Focused on Britain for now, Raven-Ellison also has plans for Ireland and international walking maps; later on, routes for cyclists and horseback riders, and even kayakers, can be added.

The project aims to help more Britons travel on foot
The project aims to help more Britons travel on foot

He has secured funding from Scottish Charity Paths For All, the Kestrelman Trust and other supporters, and already recruited 700 volunteers to walk and report on Britain’s roads, lanes, footpaths and open spaces.

To cover the projected 100,000 kilometres of routes – ideally, the most direct “desire lines” that link A to B – it’s estimated a total of 10,000 volunteers are required to undertake walks, report back on accessibility, enjoyment, food and drink en route, and advise if there is an “unaccessible level of road walking”. Volunteers are being asked to do a walk just once. Routes can later be improved by others who visit the website or by local residents with insider knowledge.

While the maps produced by the Ordnance Survey (which is supporting Slow Ways) are great for hiking in open spaces, and the computer algorithms used in smartphones and satnavs are useful to drivers, Slow Ways aims to humanise our experience of our landscape.

“When you type your search into our site, you will get a trusted route tried and tested by locals,” says Raven-Ellison.

“There are a lot of places where there is permissive access that don’t appear on OS maps. There are also paths along A and B roads in the countryside that are perfectly good for walking along.”

Totnes, and the countryside beyond - Getty
Totnes, and the countryside beyond - Getty

Every route till be named with the first three letters of its origin and the first three letters of its destination: thus Wimborne to Poole would be “Wimpoo” and Winchester to King’s Somborne is “Winkin”.

Raven-Ellison hopes the project will make walking more appealing to city-dwellers.

“You can walk out of most cities in an hour, many in half an hour. People have a very distorted sense of space, so they take a train to get somewhere else, to go for a walk.

“Also, out in the country it can be quite expensive to stay or eat. In a town or city you can buy some food at a supermarket and get an Airbnb or couchsurf, at the end of your walk.”

Volunteers have reported back that they discovered great new places, not in well-known hiker honeypots like Snowdonia, but in places like the East Midlands and Merseyside, often right on their doorstep.

In championing access and an inclusive approach to the countryside, Slow Ways could also serve as a tool for lobbying landowners and local government. Walkers routinely find the most direct path blocked by a “No Trespassing” sign or come across a waymarker deliberately allowed to fall, lost in a tangle of bushes.

“Where there is political tension about using a route, hopefully it will generate some pressure to make access possible,” says Raven-Ellison.

Slow Ways might feed into Defra’s Environmental Land Management proposals, which could see farmers remunerated for providing public access.

So far, 700 volunteers have created 7,500 routes and started doing walks, some as groups – including reenactment groups who do walks in period garb – others on solitary rambles.

Hundreds of volunteers have signed up to help create the resource
Hundreds of volunteers have signed up to help create the resource

Dartmouth-based Andrew Mackay signed up as a volunteer after attending a “hack day” in London. He is now part of a team developing Slow Ways in my region.

“I signed up because Dan’s call to action was enticing,” he says. “I’m an outdoor educator by profession, so really resonated with the idea of producing something that would encourage people outdoors. That and the prospect of being part of something collective and organic, especially during the winter months. It’s turning out to be an excellent project to help with under lockdown!

“We’ve created routes as a a team, linking places in the South West. Devon lanes can be very challenging. Part of the project has highlighted some areas of the country where this is particularly bad, which hopefully will be something that can be used in future to improve our footpath network.”

For Totnes, Mackay’s group has already drafted routes to Dartmouth, Ashburton, Buckfastleigh, Ivybridge, Ipplepen, Marldon, Paignton, Brixham and Halwell.

“I’d describe the Totnes to Paignton route as a journey down country lanes and up Devon hills, visiting creeks and passing-by woodlands,” he says.

“It gives the chance to break at campsites, travel through a nature reserve and ends passing by sandstone cliffs and Paignton harbour.

“Some lane walking, but more than made up for by peaceful countryside views.”

Which means I have no more excuses. Totpai will be my project this weekend. And I have signed up as a volunteer. No point in wasting a good walk.

Depending on the response, and allowing time for uploading and plotting the routes on OS maps, the Slow Ways should be made available to the public during winter.

“We want to launch at a time that’s sensitive to Covid-19,” says Raven-Ellison. “I’m hoping we can go live in the next couple of months.”

Fancy volunteering and doing a walk? Register your interest at https://slowways.uk/