Only seven cities still to link. Can you help with the last push in this epic milestone?
There are over 2500 towns and villages being joined up by the Slow Ways national walking network, which is a huge undertaking, and it’s going really well! As a milestone in this epic quest, we have been encouraging a big push to get all 70 cities joined by a kind of skeleton network.
Where are we up to?
After a summer and autumn of working on this, we are really getting there!
63 of the 70 cities are now connected
94% of the routes in the intercity network are reviewed
76% of the routes are verified thanks to getting three or more positive reviews! (purple routes below)
Here it is. Purple routes have been walked and positively reviewed three or more times, green routes need you! Click on the map or here to see this as a live waylist.
So what are the seven floating cities?
Cities missing from the network:
England is missing Peterborough
Wales is missing Bangor, St Asaph, St Davids
Scotland is missing Stirling, Inverness, Aberdeen
Can you help reel them in?
England: Peterborough
Just one route needs walking by two people. It’s lovely Melton Mowbray to lovely Oakham. Four stars, 12 miles, needs two more reviews. Here it is.
Wales: Bangor & St Asaph
There are a few gaps along the North Wales coast, with Bangor at one end and St Asaph at the other.
Want to really get stuck in to the Slow Ways maker experience? All four of the routes between St Cyrus and Aberdeen have been walked but found lacking. As such we need new routes suggesting, drawing as gpx files, and uploading. And then walking and reviewing, three times! If you were part of the original route-drawing hack day or online events, or if you wish you had been, here’s your chance!
(To make a new route you need to follow the methodology here, create a gpx file of the route in an app such as All Trails, OS Maps, or Open Street Map, and upload it to the route page.)
Machynlleth to Shrewsbury: four routes, all have two reviews already
If you can help with any of these, thank you! Claim your kudos by letting us know it was you on social media – you can find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Bluesky and Threads.
There’s a sadness in recognising that as people of colour, we are well-versed in understanding why the caged bird sings, but are yet to know the same freedoms as a heron or cormorant
By Evie Muir, writer and founder of Peaks of Colour
How does it feel to be as free as a bird? This was the question we endeavoured to answer during Peaks of Colour’s second walkshop in a series created collaboratively with the Right to Roam campaign. Our first walkshop explored how nature can support us to heal the grief that disconnects us from the land, our bodies and each other. The second walkshop ‘Embodying Liberatory Freedoms’ invited participants to explore somatic practices which, when experienced in nature, have the potential to mend what has been severed.
As we idled along the winding footpath, we passed watermills and dams, remnants of Sheffield’s industrial roots that have long since been reclaimed by the nature trail
Given the themes of remedy and repair, it seemed appropriate for this walkshop to take place along the Rivelin Valley Trail. A three-mile nature trail which follows the Rivelin river, joining the suburbs of northwest Sheffield to the rolling hills of the Peak District, the Rivelin Valley Trail felt like a metaphor for connection. As we idled along the winding footpath, we passed watermills and dams, remnants of Sheffield’s industrial roots that have long since been reclaimed by the nature trail. It was a notable reminder of what has brought us to this place: the sense of inner rewilding we hope to also experience for ourselves.
Migratory birds
Taking place during Refugee Week, as part of Migration Matters Festival, the day began with a birdwatching and nature meditation walk, led by ornithologist, Right to Roam campaigner and former conservationist with the RSPB, Nadia Sheikh. We grappled with binoculars, attuned our bird identification techniques through sensory awareness, and considered the contradictions projected on the human and the more-than human.
A life free from restrictions, from scrutiny, from policing, from struggle, from heartache and the hypervigilance, tension, anxiety and stress it causes within us. What would it be to exist in our bodies safely?
The migration of birds has long since been celebrated by white-led environmental organisations. Year after year, season after season, the anticipated arrival of swallows, house martins and swifts elicit rejoice and jubilation. The arrival of refugees and asylum seekers however, persecuted and destitute, receives a repugnantly hostile welcome. Despite our movement being incited by the same conditions – climate displacement, unrest, survival, self-betterment – for people of colour, our migration is often met with suspicion at the imagined borders we humans have constructed for ourselves.
There’s a sadness in recognising that as people of colour, we, and the ancestors who came before us, are well-versed in understanding why the caged bird sings, but are yet to know the same freedoms as a heron or cormorant. A life free from restrictions, from scrutiny, from policing, from struggle, from heartache and the hyper-vigilance, tension, anxiety and stress it causes within us. What would it be to exist in our bodies safely? we asked.
There’s a sadness in recognising that as people of colour, we, and the ancestors who came before us are well-versed in understanding why the caged bird sings, but are yet to know the same freedoms as a heron or cormorant
Tuning in
This was the focus of our exploration in the second half of the walkshop. Diverting off the Rivelin Valley Trail, we settled at Flying Horse Lawn, a private-land-turned-community-space which boasts a quiet enclave under larch, lime, silver birch and an impressive shelter that can double as a stage or studio. Here movement artist, performer, and facilitator, Sym Stellium, introduced us to movement and visualisation exercises that cement somatics as a political practice.
Pay attention to the part of your body that feels the most tension
Lifting our heads to the sky, we welcomed the gentle raindrops that cooled us down amidst the mid-afternoon heat. Then, we moved our bodies. “First, pay attention to the part of your body that feels the most tension,” Sym guided us. “Listen to what this part of your body is telling you. What stories is it trying to share, what histories is it trying to teach, what can we learn from this tension? What movements does this part of your body want you to make? Take up space and see where you go when you are being led by your body.”
Time became elastic as we oriented around the grounds. Limbs and extremities winding and contorting, our feet being led by the body part that moved through us in a way that felt instinctive and natural. “Then, pay attention to the part of your body that feels the least amount of tension, that feels the most free,” Sym said, and we repeated our movements, this time with a lightness. Our jaws unclenched and our fists released as we moved through what felt good.
An ancestral line
It was here I realised I don’t feel this way as much as I should. The part of the body that really spoke to me were the balls of my feet. My soles felt hot, and a pulsating, aching heat throbbed in my walking boots. I felt moved to remove them, and sooth my feet on the cool, damp grass. The more I paid attention to this heat, the more the sensation started to travel, up through my toes, to my ankles, the back of my calves, thighs, lower back, spine, shoulders, neck and temple, until my whole body began to tingle.
I must look after my feet, I thought, show them more gratitude and care; they transport me through this healing journey
It wasn’t uncomfortable. Rather, it felt like the immediate release after a massage. I glided gently through the grass, and by the time Sym brought us back into the space, I realised I barely felt my feet at all. I felt elevated off the ground, floating, with the grass caressing my journey. I must look after my feet, I thought, show them more gratitude and care; they transport me through this healing journey.
When it came to sharing what arose for us in the session, we sat around in the circle on the damp grass, and discussed the similarities and differences in our tensions. I found I wasn’t the only person who was drawn to notice their feet, and ancestral trauma was something that came up regularly. Someone noted that they felt sensation only in one foot. They had a chronic illness, and often experienced pain in their feet. But when they interrogated this further, they realised this was the particular foot which a parent had had amputated, and maybe they were experiencing that transferred pain.
The neck was also a part of the body which felt particularly noticeable for people. One person reflected how conscious they were that their neck was trapped between their head and body, like an in-between land, a liminal space that often gets neglected. “It’s what I use to look up at birds,” another agreed. “I must look after it more.”
Others felt more called to examine their relationship with the inner workings of their neck, their throat and tongue. People reflected on the ways they were instrumental tools of oral traditions, or how it represented the practice of holding your tongue. “For me, it was the front of my neck,” someone said. “It didn’t make much sense to me at first, then I thought of the two veins that always appeared in my mum’s neck when she was stressed, that’s how we knew she was angry.” A relatable chorus of mmms sounded in solidarity.
“It made me think of all the tension that has been built up over generations, that appears in blood streams. All the tension from staying silent instead of expressing the feelings, because for whatever reason, we know we can’t”.
An embodied liberation
What stood out to me was the ways that feeling freedom in our bodies was contingent on us feeling through the pain, in order to identify the sites of transformation that we needed to pay attention to. Exploring embodied responses to liberation/oppression, freedoms/unfreedoms, as a tool to reclaim ongoing healing, also allowed us to transform our anxieties, be they about our bodies, our environments and climates, or the structures we must navigate. It also allowed us to visualise ourselves, but not from a place of judgement.
With Nadia’s ornithological wisdom and Sym’s intuitive guidance we were able to feel at peace, present and rooted in place rather than at the unruly behest of our emotions. A bee could buzz past our ear, and we could remain still and in connection with it. The rain could fall on our faces and we could be present within it. The wind could howl through the leaves of the trees and we could embrace the loud soundscape of nature. Just for a moment, for one afternoon, we understood, knew deeply, what it means to feel freedom.
This story is written by Evie Muir as part of a series documenting three walkshops created by Peaks of Colour and Right to Roam. Read the first of her stories here.
Evie Muir
I’m Evie (she/they), I’m both a domestic abuse survivor and qualified domestic abuse specialist, writer and the founder of Peaks of Colour — a Peak District-based nature-for-healing community group, by and for people of colour.
Having worked in the VAWG (Violence Against Women and Girls) sector for over 10 years, specialising in Black and queer survivors’ intersectional experiences of gendered and racialised trauma, I left the sector when I became burnt out, disenfranchised and disillusioned. My work now sits on the intersections of gendered, racial and land justice, and seeks to nurture survivors’ joy, rest, hope and imagination as abolitionist praxis. Advocating for the decolonisation of the outdoors, I’m interested in the ways nature can forge a landscape of healing and justice outside of carceral feminist models.
As a Northern freelance writer I’m passionate about the liberating form of writing as healing and resistance. My debut book, ‘Radical Rest’, explores Black and Abolitionist Feminist approaches to activist burnout and is published by Elliot & Thompson in 2024.
A big group of variously abled people walked a chunk of a Bournemouth Slow Way. As they went they invented and illustrated a very weird and wonderful story
This story is part of our Tales from a Slow Way series. Each Tales award includes a contribution to the organisation as well as a project fee to the creative. The contribution for this project went to Dazzarama Drama, who passed it on to Scope, the disability charity that this walk fundraised for.
“This was the plan. Our shared story will capture a moment in time – this group, this route, this day – inspiring others to experience their own moment and to see the creative potential in a simple walk.
We will all walk the Slow Way together. Along the way we will devise a story inspired by our surroundings (the river, trees, bridges, boats, the weather etc), by people we meet (eg dog walkers, children in the play park, kayakers, wild swimmers), and our diverse lived experience in the world as a group of variously abled individuals.
As we walk, improviser and storyteller Ben Lindsay-Clark will ask open questions which everyone is invited to answer. Their ideas become the building blocks of our shared story. The group will be led in immersive sound-scape and performance as the story unfolds.
Whilst walking we will collect interesting plant material en route (eg grasses, daisies, fallen leaves etc). At the end of our walk we will be led by artist Ilse Black in a cyanotype workshop, using the plant material to create sun-printed images of our walk. These timeless images are impactful and satisfying to create, and enable our group of learning disabled adults a different way in which to express their response to the walk and shared story.
Dazzarama Drama will benefit as a group by heightening and broadening their ambitions about the kind of projects they can achieve, rather than simply being limited by their usual ‘local hall’ rehearsal surroundings. Drama can come alive anywhere. Streets. Parks. Riverbanks. Their confidence and sense of bonding and camaraderie will be increased by sharing this journey together.
Treehouse Theatre and Ilse Black are based in Bournemouth. We are working with Dazzarama Drama, a local drama group for learning disabled adults, who are also based in Bournemouth. Our route is part of the Slow Way from Bournemouth to Christchurch, Bouchr two. We are walking approximately a mile of this Slow Way, which runs along the bank of the River Stour from Wick Ferry to Tuckton Tea Gardens.
We’ve chosen this section because it’s safe and wheelchair accessible for our group. The length of the section of the Slow Way that we’re walking is carefully judged as our group has physical limitations. We hope that highlighting this walk will inspire other people who also have access needs and want to walk somewhere close to nature.
Everyone gets a cyanotype zine and their own cyanotype to take home.
And this was how it went:
A little walk
Bringing together the story-making skills of Treehouse Theatre and the artistic practice of Ilse Black with the learning disabled community members of Dazzarama Drama, the trio worked together along a Slow Ways route to create a cyan-atopic inspired printed and digital zine.
We went for our story walk at the end of October, which was absolutely delightful. There were 29 of us (and a dog) a mixture of adults with learning difficulties who all attend Dazzarama Drama classes locally, plus their carers/family members, and our little creative team. The sun was even shining for most of it!
While the sun shines
We invented a story together based on what we saw, who we met along the river side path, and let our imaginations run free.
Our walk finished at Tuckton Tea Gardens where we used their big garden marquee for our cyanotype illustration workshop. We used Victorian sun printing techniques to make illustrations for the story, using leaves & grasses, twigs & flowers found on the walk, and simple paper cut-out silhouettes.
Once the illustrations were dry, they were given to the people who made them, to hang on their wall. We scanned them all first though, and used them to illustrate our zine which you can read here:
The zine was printed – we made 50 hard copies – enough to give one to every person who was there, and we posted one to David Attenborough too, who sent us a lovely reply! The remainder will go to the Tearooms, where people can read it over a coffee, and hopefully be inspired to have a walk on the creative side.
You can watch the making of Ducks versus Pirates here:
Ben Lindsey-Clark (Treehouse Theatre) works widely with the local disabled community, and is an experienced improviser, story teller and professional actor. He is skilled in weaving together unique devised stories and empowering audiences to discover their creativity.
Ilse Black is an artist and illustrator delivering community art workshops with the aim of enhancing engagement with the outdoors and nature. Ilse recently completed a year-long collaborative project with Step into Nature through Dorset AONB, where the artists’ collaboration, through delivery, devised new approaches to enabling creative engagement for a diverse audience.
In 2023 we launched ‘Tales from a Slow Way’, an annual community stories initiative that enabled us to commission creatives and community groups to work together to produce original stories and content situated around Slow Ways walking routes. Each award included a donation to the organisation as well as a project fee to the creative.
Together, the awarded projects map the sheer diversity of walkers across the UK and highlight the importance of forging new paths.This year’s ten awardees were supported with funding from the Pilgrim Trust. This project is in partnership with our friends, All the Elements and The Outsiders Project.
Click here to find out more about our Tales from a Slow Ways project!Why not sign up to walk and review Slow Ways. You can also find and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
From Brighton to Bradford via London and Leeds, linking up the the four places my friend Ro lived, and holding sessions for bereaved friends along the way
By Nina Carter-Brown
A while ago I was walking in woods near to where I live, thinking about the upcoming months. I got to November and my mind went immediately to the 12th of November which would be a year since Rimoaine, my best friend, died. While I was imagining that day and how difficult and painful it might be, I had a very immediate and deep moment of clarity in what has been a confusing year, and knew I wanted to walk.
I realised that for me at this time one day wouldn’t be enough, I needed to walk with my grief for a longer period of time. I considered some well-known long-distance routes, but wanted this walk to be meaningful to Ro and quite soon came up with the idea of Brighton to Bradford, via London and Leeds which are the four places he lived, and also makes for some nice alliteration!
I had a very immediate and deep moment of clarity in what has been a confusing year, and knew I wanted to walk
I enjoy walking, moving forwards one step at a time, I’ve done some longer walks/pilgrimages always with other people and for around a week. I like how immersive it becomes – it’s not always comfortable or easy but gives me opportunities to gain new inner and outer perspectives. It can be physically demanding, but in another way is relaxing – no need to think about where to go, how to get there, what to pack, what to wear, and just be in nature and hopefully be present with my thoughts and feelings.
My dad told me about Slow Ways which is an ambitious citizen-made peer-reviewed national walking network. A Slow Way is a route for walking, or wheeling, between two places – neighbouring cities, towns and villages – using a wide variety of existing paths, ways, trails and roads.
I love their vision and the opportunities and possibilities it opens up, and was able to use their map to create my ‘waylist’, a personalised route made up of shorter routes which can be downloaded as gpx maps. Each Slow Way needs to be positively reviewed three times before it can become verified, and I’ll be supporting the project by reviewing some of my routes along the way.
Healing through hospitality
I think hospitality is one of the best things about humanity, the opening of a heart and a home, and have experienced it in beautiful and sometimes surprising ways around the world, as well as offering what I can to others. Each night on my journey north I’ll be staying with friends, or friends of friends, or sometimes strangers (thanks to my mum asking local churches if someone can host me) and I’m so grateful in advance for the warmth, bed, food, shower and conversations at the end of each day.
Another thing that I wanted to do on my walk was create spaces for people to come together to share stories and memories of friends who have died, and for these friends to be held by everyone as a witness to their lives, honouring and remembering them. In doing this we can acknowledge the importance of friendship and celebrate it through tears and laughter, understanding and love. I realised when Ro died there weren’t many spaces specifically for friend bereavement and I do believe there is a place for it, and am grateful to those who are creating these spaces and allowing possibilities of connection. I’ll be holding these spaces in Brighton, London, Leicester, Sheffield, Leeds and Bradford; it is an open invitation so please come along if you would like to.
I’ve started something monthly in Bradford and called it Their Light Shines On, so this is what I wanted to call these evenings (and one morning – Leeds!). Everyone is welcome, to share a story or memory of a friend, to share their friend’s name, or maybe to listen and hold the space.
Please spread the word to anyone who might be interested. There is more detail on the flyers on my blog. Please do spread the word.
London – Tuesday 12th November 7.30-8.30pm at Kiln Theatre (John Lyon Space)
Leicester – Wednesday 20th November 7.30-8.30pm at Holy Cross Church (Frassati Centre)
Sheffield – Tuesday 26th November 7.30 – 8.30pm at the Quaker Meeting House
Leeds – Saturday 30th November 10.30-11.30am at John Lewis (Community Hub 4th Floor)
Bradford – Monday 2nd December 7.30 – 8.30pm at Common Space
It has taken a huge amount of emotional energy to actually plan this walk, I would get lost in the detail but then have to stop when I remembered why I am doing this, the pain of my best friend being dead is always present.
I’ve never written a diary or kept a journal but I am hoping to write something each day on my blog here. My journey begins in Brighton today, the 8th of November, and I’ll arrive at my destination Bradford on 30th November. I couldn’t have even got to this point without all the love, support and encouragement from family and friends, I’m more grateful than I can express in words. Thank you for joining me on my walk home, remembering Ro. I miss Ro so much, every day, but I know that I’m walking with him (and he’s also with me when I’m drinking coffee and eating cake!)
Join us for monthly online sessions when we’ll be interviewing each other to find out about the peculiar backstories from the team behind Slow Ways
Want to know more about the team behind Slow Ways? Several of us have done some really peculiar, off-the-wall things, and we’d love to invite you to hear about the past lives being channelled into the Slow Ways vision.
From walking around Britain wearing brain sensors, heading off on a six-month epic with a donkey called Chico, uncovering the underbelly of cities as a renegade guide, or being plunged alone into the Canadian wilderness for a survival TV show, we’ll bare all!
Each session one of the team will interview another, plus there will be time for a Q and A so you can ask – how did that help create a national walking network?!
Tues 3rd December: Guerilla geographer Daniel Raven-EllisonTickets here
Thurs 9th January: Wilderness survivor Eva OutramTickets here
Weds 5th February: Renegade guide Saira NiaziTickets here
Weds 5th March: Donkey wrangler Hannah EngelkampTickets here
Dan is the founder of Slow Ways. He has a delicious back catalogue of intriguing and provoking geography projects, including walking 1,686km across all of the UK’s national parks and cities with an electroencephalogram on his head to record six different emotions as he explored. He created the National Park City movement in London and #100seconds films about land use. And he used to be a geography teacher! Find out about how all of these things led him to have the epiphany that became Slow Ways, and get the chance to grill him yourself!
Daniel will be interviewed by Hannah.
Eva Outram, wilderness survivor
Thursday 9th January, 7-8pm
As well as being Slow Ways’s newest team member, Eva runs eva__exploring on Instagram to over 60k followers, where she posts about living an adventurous life. She’ll be talking about being on Channel 4 wilderness survival show Alone, which dropped her into the Canadian wilderness right by the arctic circle, to see how long she’d manage to stay, catching all of her own food and avoiding becoming a meal for bears. Hear about the contestant who only made it four hours, how it was going in as a vegetarian, and what difference the experience has made to her post-show attitude to life. Don’t miss this!
Eva will be interviewed by Hannah.
Saira Niazi, renegade guide
Weds 5th February, 7-8pm
Renegade guide Saira took bunking off to new heights after discovering that she preferred wandering around, finding new places, talking to strangers and recording adventures to being in school. She says she would often end up exploring aimlessly – markets, museums, city streets and suburbs, and sometimes further afield to places like Stonehenge and Brighton. She still loves getting lost and learning through her explorations, and is always sort-of deliberately slightly unprepared. Saira, fresh back from meeting rebel guides all over New York, will be talking about how her love of wandering has led her all over the world.
Hannah Engelkamp, donkey wrangler
Weds 5th March, 7-8pm
Hannah walked around Wales with a donkey, taking not-far-off six months to do it. She’d never had a pet before and thought it would be easy and companionable. It was not. Get some tips on wild camping with a very conspicuous animal, find out what they did when they encountered stiles, and discover whether they did ever learn to like each other.
One of us is going through a bad situation. After we’d raked through the hows and whens and whys, I asked what she was going to do now. “I want to walk. I just want to walk myself through it.”
This story is the next in our Trails series. We invited people to apply to assemble a group of friends and walk a multi-day trail of Slow Ways. Cressida Peever narrates the journey, walking 80 miles through Northumberland from Berwick to Alnwick with friends Sarah and Anna.
Good Friday, Beraln one (day one)
We meet on the platform at Berwick. The three of us giddy. Backpacks full. Boots laced. Layered. Shiny. Our conversation surging, branching off, turning back on itself; so much to catch up on – and there is time. We have four days and eighty miles ahead of us.
Just south of the station we cross a footbridge over the river Tweed. This is the official starting point of our walk. We check the map. It feels like there should be a crowd to see us off. Better: there’s a magnificent viaduct to the left, and the sea stretching out to the right.
The rain of the last week has cleared completely, gifting us an azure blue sky and glorious sunshine. Before we have even made it to the coastal path, we stop to strip off layers and adjust our bags accordingly. Then we’re out of the town, past the lighthouse, and alongside the sea. We tumble over one another with questions – about a new partner, a broken heart, a family spat, a job opportunity; we know the headlines already, but it’s only being together like this that we can drink in the delicious detail of each other’s lives.
Although, we have never been together quite like this. We met through work some six-ish years ago. Since then, we’ve all started different jobs, all moved apart. We have touched base at weddings and parties and over coffee. This is already very different. There’s something about the act of walking that makes us able to speak more freely. It’s the looking forwards and talking into wide open space; not over-thinking body language or every facial expression.
The path rolls down off the crest of the cliff and meets the shore. The tide’s out, and the honey-coloured sand is a runway towards the sea. The perfect stop for our first tea break, a spot of sun-cream and a biscuit.
One of us is going through a bad situation. Though she’s been wrestling with it for a year, she only revealed it to me a few weeks ago – also over tea and biscuits. After we’d raked through the hows and whens and whys, I asked what she was going to do now. “I want to walk. I just want to walk myself through it.”
The route pulls us away from the lip of the land slightly, putting undulating grassy terrain between us and the sea. We meet a dog-walker here and, when she asks, are only too eager to tell her where we’re going: Belford tonight, and Morpeth by Monday. “That’s a fair way,” she says, but without the incredulity of London friends when they’d enquired about my Easter plans. This elderly woman with her scrappy dogs and well-worn coat could probably beat us there if she’d a mind to.
Before long, our route draws into the coast again, giving us a clear view of Holy Island. At first, it looks like part of the mainland, connected by a mile – maybe more – of golden sand. But the tide is coming in fast. Within the hour the sea has consumed the causeway. The last cars tear across to avoid being trapped on the wrong side. Slate-coloured clouds gather over the island, sending a rainbow down directly on its castle. There’s magic in the atmosphere.
“There’s a little telephone booth, and when we ring we are asked how quickly we can cross. “Uhh… Thirty seconds?” The voice replies to go now! and we dash through the gate, across the tracks and into the neat fields on the other side”
We re-trace the steps of the Holy Island pilgrims, first on St Cuthbert’s Way, and then onto St Oswald’s Way, taking us deeper inland. At Fenham Hill, we have to cross the East Coast mainline. There’s a little telephone booth, and when we ring, we are asked how quickly we can cross. “Uhh… Thirty seconds?”The voice replies to go now!, and we dash through the gate, across the tracks and into the neat fields on the other side.
The light fades gradually and the sky turns orange-purple over the sea behind us. A gentle rain ambles over, and for the first time we have cause to throw on waterproofs and put protective layers over our backpacks. As darkness descends, so do we – down the hill to Belford, and a hearty pub dinner.
Saturday, Beraln one (day two)
We’d stretched before bed, and we do it again this morning, limbering up for what will be the longest day on our feet: 21 miles from Belford to Alnwick. We apply plasters to pressure points, and buy more at the shop – just in case.
It’s less than half an hour before our route has us in open countryside again, already feeling far from the town. The well-kept hedgerows, drystone walls and herds remind us that civilisation is close, even if we’re the only people we see for hours.
We’re more tuned in to the natural world today. Out initial excitement has deepened into wonder, and we pause frequently to remark on the landscape, note the colour of the fungus, or share botanical insights:
“See those nettles? The white flowers on the stem tell you it’s the kind with no sting.”
Then it gets muddy. We have to pick our way through the saturated fields slowly to avoid sinking up to our shins – since we’re still clean enough for that to be a concern. It’s also the weight of the backpacks. Lean too far or unexpectedly, and you’ll overbalance, fall, and we can’t afford injury. It’s a welcome relief when we hit the next village – Warenford – and are able to buy pints of lemonade at the pub. Liquid morale.
Although the main source of energy is the conversation. We’ve talked non-stop. No topic is too big or small: childhood holidays; dream meals; nasty break-ups; Jacobean history; what makes a good walking boot. It’s the rope that we pull one another along with, taking turns to lead or be lifted.
“You seem lighter today.”
I mean in spirits; less weighed down by everything else she’s contending with. It’s so true that she doesn’t take my meaning, and responds by talking about layers and terrain. But she gives me my answer later:
“When you’re walking… there’s something about feeling grounded at moments when your life feels out of your control and chaotic, and you can’t see how to fix it. You’re literally moving yourself forwards.”
“Yes. It is very literal. We went through that muddy patch earlier – which is how you describe something in your life, right? Or occasionally you lose the path, or the path appears before you…”
She’s right. Difficult terrain. The path less taken. Following in someone’s footsteps. Effortlessly wise, that one.
“When you’re walking… there’s something about feeling grounded at moments when your life feels out of your control and chaotic”
“Doing a long walk, there’s a sense of me proving to myself that I can do it, and along the way learning more about my body and how I overcome something. Inner strength.”
We have literal obstacles to overcome now: a mass of fallen trees blocking our way. We scramble over, under, trying to stay close to the path, but it’s impossible. The lattice of bark and branches is too dense. So we look at the map and plot a different course. It happens.
But this, along with the muddy path this morning, mean we’re not as far along as we’d hoped. We have tarmacked country lanes underfoot now, which are more reliable, but somehow accentuate every ache and sore that has been sneakily developing. We make several pauses to adjust bags, put on more plasters, and re-lace boots. At four thirty, we are still six miles from Alnwick, and feeling every step.
So it feels like divine intervention when around the next corner we happen upon a tea shop, seemingly in the middle of nowhere – like a mirage in the desert. It is still open – just! – and has twenty different kinds of tea, as well as great wedges of cake topped with chocolate eggs.
Warmed and sugar-fuelled, carrying on, we are rewarded further with a spectacular sunset: the clouds spun into pink and purple candyfloss, before the sun washes everything tangerine. It’s fully dark by the time we march into Alnwick, and the castle is lit up majestically against the deep blue dusk.
We are over half way.
Easter Sunday, Rotaln one
Kippers for breakfast. Then it’s boots on and up a steep hill, heading south. We’ve lost an hour of sleep to daylight saving, but have managed to get out on time, and buoyantly. There’s a stretch along an old railway line, with the trees on either side reaching towards each other. Having such changeable landscape each day has been a joy – making each moment distinctive and easier to relish.
The fields and barns are full of new-born lambs and fluffy ewes still wearing their winter coats.
“It takes about forty minutes to shear a sheep.”
She knows this because every year as a child, she would go up to a tiny village in Scotland and her family would help with whatever needed doing, be it fleece-rolling or sheep shearing.
“So, you have the sheep on its side, and you cut away the wool, line by line, and when you get over half way, you flip the sheep over and cut the other half and then the sheep runs away. And my dad’s trademark was never quite cutting over the half-way mark, so at the point at which you let the sheep roam free, it would have a mohican down its back and it was too late – there was no catching that sheep until the next year!”
We have naturally drifted into sharing childhood memories. They are at once urgent, charged declarations of how we came to be who we are; and at the same time, they’re random, selected for their power to generate a fresh memory from someone else. To keep us talking, listening, moving. Later, when I recall these conversations, I will also be able to clearly visualise the landscape around us at each moment, like our words have fastened to the grasses and branches and fenceposts.
We challenge ourselves to climb to the top of another hill before lunch, and our effort is recompensed with a spectacular view as we eat. On all sides, a patchwork quilt of lush green fields, sewn together by hedgerows and thickets. We take out the paper map now, spread out over all six knees. Point out Percy Wood. Old Swarland. Newton-on-the-Moor. Pauperhaugh.
Onwards to Rothbury, then. Through an active airfield. Across more muddy farmland, with equine gatekeepers. Changing course when the route suggested crossing a stream, which had swelled to a torrent in spring rain. When we finally did cross the River Coquet (via a sturdy stone bridge, thank goodness) it was calm and quiet. Reverent, almost.
We end the day’s walk as we began: on an old railway line. This time, it is rock faces on either side, shaggy with moss. Rothbury is bronzed in evening sun when we finally reach it. The sky morphs to a bruised black-purple, and it smells like rain.
Easter Monday, Rotmor one
It pours. At least we feel vindicated for bringing strong waterproofs.
We start the day with our steepest climb yet, and as pretty Rothbury falls away, we discover a more dramatic landscape. Here, at last, is the rugged orange and brown heather I associate with Northumberland. It sweeps across the tops of the long, broad hills like wildfire, and crackles as we stomp through it. Coupled with the dark skies and pelting rain, it feels truly wild up here. Like the end of the world. Or the start of something.
“I like not knowing how much I’ll keep changing. New experiences, new things. I’ve never had a five-year plan or a ten-year plan. So, who knows? It doesn’t give me any stress or anxiety. It’s very freeing.”
“I like not knowing how much I’ll keep changing. New experiences, new things. I’ve never had a five-year plan or a ten-year plan. So, who knows? It doesn’t give me any stress or anxiety. It’s very freeing”
All three of us are thirty-one. So, all being well, about a third of the way through our lives. If I’d had to guess when we met where we’d be now, I’d have been wildly wrong. And I’d certainly never have placed us seventy miles down in a muddy field near to – (where are we now?) – Longhorsley.
“I think if I were sixteen and I could see myself now… how impressed I’d be. How much I would want to be myself. And I suppose I have this belief that the trajectory will only continue, and I’m excited to think that, looking ahead, thirty-one-year old me is going to be blown away by what sixty-year-old me achieves.”
“Breathless. Hearts hammering. Astonishingly, still laughing…”
The rain is seeping through the cracks. Our gloves are wet, chilling our hands. The water is picking at the plasters on our heels. The fields and footpaths are so saturated with water now that we have to shimmy along fences to avoid wading through boot-submerging sludge. The most unpleasant stretch is just after lunch, when the muddy field has been ploughed with deep ruts, so we have to leap from mound to mound for over half an hour. Breathless. Hearts hammering. Astonishingly, still laughing.
But our resident botanist is still eagle-eyed. As we come out of a stretch of woodland, she audibly gasps and kneels down to point out a delicate green plant with green flowers, growing close to the base of a tree. Its common name is townhall clock, and it has not been recorded in this spot before, and not in this area since 2018. But it’s waited here for us, to boost our spirits in the drizzle.
“I think I’ve always been here. It’s about listening to myself more. Listening to my gut, which I’ve always known was right. Trusting in that more… I do have the answers… in the values that I hold.”
The end is nearly in sight. It’s 7pm, and our train leaves Morpeth station in exactly one hour. We do some quick calculations. From here, it will take fifty-eight minutes to get to the station on foot. Determined to finish what we started, we pick up the pace – and immediately hit the biggest hurdle yet:
“After a full day of rain, it’s fierce and brown, the bottom invisible. Should we turn back and look for a different route? There isn’t time.”
It’s a steep drop down a muddy bank. The ground slithers underfoot, and we cling to branches all the way down in an attempt to stay upright. At the bottom, the route crosses a stream. After a full day of rain it’s fierce and brown, the bottom invisible. Should we turn back and look for a different route? There isn’t time. So we lock hands and wade through it. Now, soaked to the knees, we scramble up the other side of the bank on all-fours.
Then we’re on solid road. We break into a run, so delighted are we to see tarmac and street lamps. With this final, inexplicable burst of energy, we sail into Morpeth station fifteen minutes ahead of the train. There’s no welcome party – not even another passenger to tell what we’ve just achieved. But there is a large map painted on the wall, which shows our entire route from Berwick. Just look how far we’re come!
There are tears then, in the safety of a huddled group. Joy. Relief. Blisters.
“I didn’t think I could do it. But now I know – if I can do that…”
“You can! You did!”
“Let’s do this next time in Scotland.”
“Yes! And I want to explore your bit of Yorkshire.”
“Do you think I’ve got enough time to change my socks?”
The train whistles in right on time.
About us
We are three women in our early 30s who originally met working in theatre six years ago. Now, we live in different parts of the country, doing different things, but we’re united by a love of the outdoors and the fact that we have a blast when we do get together once every few months.
Sarah is the most active person I know. She plays in numerous sports teams, and spends every spare moment hiking. She works for a botanical charity, and is never short of facts about plants and nature. She’s exceptionally wise, easy-going and adventurous.
Anna wants to walk her way into the next chapter of her life. She’s going to climb all of the Munros, so this was good training. She’s possibly the bravest person in the world, and brimming over with joy.
I’m Cressida, the writer and filmmaker. Much of my work is set in the outdoors, whether it’s inspired by Cuthbert’s Way, recorded in The National Forest, or a set in an imaginary woodland. I write for stage, screen and audio, and love telling stories about the way people connect with the outdoors. Find me at www.cressidapeever.com or on Instagram @cressida_peever
Bafta-winning filmmaker Lily Wakeley, BBC Scotland podcaster May Robson, and artist Hannah Ustun contribute to this textured, multimedia story, resyncing life and coming up against deaths
This story is the next in our Trails series. We invited people to apply to assemble a group of friends and walk a multi-day trail of Slow Ways. They could submit the story of their adventure in whatever form they liked.
PART I: Queensferry to Inverkeithing
We stock up on coffee served in XL sized polystyrene cups before continuing along a road of XL sized detached houses of discordant styles.
We imagine that JK Rowling might live here, asking ourselves, which house is the most witchy?
My mind quietly flits to the recognition that my Grandfather’s body is leaving the house for the last time this morning, all dressed in a clean pair of cotton brushed pyjamas, having died the day before.
I idly contemplate the significance of the ending of his life and the beginning of our walk.
It’s not quite Joan Didion’s grief ‘vortex effect’, but grief swells up in small surges unexpectedly.
As the houses thin out into banks of ivy and nettles, we huddle around a low plaque marking the life of a ‘Pet’ or ‘Marjorie’ Fleming, 1803–1811, who is remembered for wandering there “in rural felicity festivity and pleasure”, praising it in her journal as a “delightful place, Braehead by name, where is ducks hens bubblyjocks 2 dogs 2 cats swine and which is delightful”.
We continue, busting out in bright early March sun, taken aback by the lyricism of this 19th century eight year old.
I later read on Wikipedia that Majorie was posthumously recognised as a child poet and prodigy, lauded as one of the “noblest works of God”.
I think about my own childhood diary comparatively, filled with injustices of being denied multicoloured hair dye.
‘Bubblyjocks’: an old name for male turkeys that derives from the sound of their cries, which then mutated into a description of pompous people. I imagine the toady men in my life, jowly and bloated.
The landscape breaks out into ploughed fields and mounds of grass kept short by sheep, with big tufts of spiky greenery and golden gorse that smell of pina-colada. This is the landscape so familiarly Scottish to me.
With the first wink of the sea, we talk about the transition of living with boyfriends: Hannah gives us tips, having already done so.
Walking stories
Before making this walk I’d been recommended Robert MacFarlane’s The Old Ways; an excerpt in Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running about his first marathon in Athens; and Howard’s End in which Leonard Bast wins the respect of some highfalutin sisters over a walk he did, amongst much else.
What is it about travelling long distances on foot that inspires these stories?
Like these writers and characters, I too share this intrigue (and hubris) about similar feats of endurance, and delight in the relatively rare and elementary experience of relying almost entirely on my body in full exposure to nature.
Hinterlands and ‘xenotopias’
The task of testing a set of Slow Ways paths was many things. As well as offering an excuse to talk to the people we encountered and getting us to get creative in instances where paths ceased to exist, absorbed into A4 roads and farmland, it offered a freedom to think less and just follow a set path.
Part of our walk intersected other ones – like the Fife Pilgrim Way – but also then went into places few walkers will likely purposefully seek out, like countryside hinterlands and ‘xenotopias’ – a term coined by MacFarlane to describe those unsettling or out-of-place landscapes.
But that is the joy of doing a whole journey entirely on foot: there is no zooming through the bits you don’t fancy. In fact, in reviewing Slow Ways routes, these are the parts arguably you must pay most attention to. I have a newfound appreciation for the way an idyll slowly or abruptly becomes built up, mediated by industrial estates and scrap yards with metal crunching machinery.
These sights are ordinarily kept out of sight, despite being essential components to the ecosystems that govern our cities and countryside.
Soundtrack of this time
Hard conversations and ‘thinking through’ things are often advised to do side-by-side with someone, preferably in motion – in a car maybe or on foot. Sometimes it feels that only through physical effort can we know something. Unlike the “homemade void” Murakami creates by running, I did this walk with two friends.
The landscape we moved through was at times incidental to our chatter and at others, a referential map of conversation, and our sore bodies a constant topic of observation. Two boys I went to university with once spent 54 days at sea rowing the Atlantic. They complained that for chunks of time the flat blue sea stretched out indistinctly, seemingly forever causing mind-numbing monotony with little stimulus to trigger their imagination. Conversation flowed seamlessly on our journey like some parts of the walk itself, and in staccato, like others.
Here I’ve tried to document our time with a similar rhythm, punctuated by May’s recordings of the people we met and the soundtrack of this time.
PART I continued
Soon only one thin line of trees divides us from a stretch of blonde beach, the tide far out.
The sand is still dense and unforgiving under foot from the water. It’s ribbed into slight divots from the motion of the tide, and patterned with wavy lines of small pink shells, cratered with silvery pools of sea.
We can see a fleshy mound and speculate what it could be as we get tentatively closer.
Its small, streamlined body, row of tiny pearly teeth and gently rounded snout are recognisable as belonging to an orca.
We contemplate the spectacle with two men in matching navy walking gear.
This baby is so small, perhaps it is a still born.
We’re all embarrassed by our impulses to take pictures of the corpse.
We leave the scene behind us for the final stretch to Queensferry – the font of the Queensferry bridges, the most famous of which gleams a brackish red. Perhaps reflecting with the blood of 73 of the 4,600 ‘Briggers’ who died labouring to make this architectural feat.
We tail the Queensferry History Group’s morning meeting, who tell us more.
We feel moments of vertigo, as the wind makes our hair wild and forces us to raise our voices.
We make a list of what gives us the ‘ick’. Hannah reads an encyclopaedia of examples compiled on her phone.
Some of the messages inscribed by lovers on a wall of ‘lovelocks’ make their way onto the growing list.
Once onto the other side, we awkwardly run across the motorway roundabout to a toilet in the Park & Ride surrounded by more incongruous gorse, the afternoon sun streaming through the perspex front onto a solitary vending machine.
We ask the group smoking outside to take a picture of us outside The Burgh Arms – our first walking milestone. They tell us that next time we come, the front will be painted a different colour.
The highstreet is like many others we will come across on the walk.
In Scotmid, I consider a bag of Iron Brew bonbons before contemplating the hot plate section – its crown jewels a small pastry case filled with piped mashed potato circling a heap of baked beans – and the first of many French Fancies dressed in frog jackets made of lurid green icing in the cold one.
The first signs of tiredness kick in as we temporarily rest, a twinge in my hip joints first making itself known.
Nineteen kilometres down, we have another ten to accomplish before sundown.
Follow the routes taken from Edinburgh to Inverkeithing and read the reviews here and here.
PART II: Inverkeithing to Dunfermline
May’s podcast from day two:
The bridges twist in different directions the further we leave them behind us, their proportions warping like the insides of a kaleidoscope.
The setting sun casts shadows throughout a graveyard, making a white granite war memorial glitter.
A farmhouse garden stretches in a walled slither between tilled fields, filled with primary-coloured toys popping in the sunset.
At this vantage, the sky is huge and unobstructed, bar the backdrop of the bridge well behind us, now appearing like snow-capped mountains far away.
May has been living in Glasgow but she’s leaving soon. Our stomping through the Scottish landscape from one place to another becomes a sort of metaphor. Our walk floats above the usual passage of time, bookended by normal life that we can consider more freely here.
We wave our arms mimicking a wind turbine casting long spidery shadows across toiled earth.
The countryside wanes into suburbs with long estate driveways, like 4 Privet Drive in Harry Potter.
Men are rallying on a floodlight astroturf in Dunfermline Tennis and Bridge club. It’s dark and we’re sore.
At last we arrive, immediately ordering a takeaway of fish curry with wads of stuffed paratha that we tear and dunk, whilst rubbing our calves and watching Fleabag in bed.
Sleep comes at us urgently.
Follow the route taken from Inverkeithing to Dunfermline and read the reviews here.
PART III: Dunfermline to Kinross
We talk with our hosts Suzie and Colin over their full Scottish fry-up, honed after ample black pudding trials.
The city is bordered by woodland, filled with fairy pools, moss and lichen and felled trees.
The severed head of a creature lies smack bang in the middle of our path. Is this our first encounter with the Beast of Blairadam? We tread around it superstitiously, gazing up at the canopy hopeful for more signs.
We meet a teenage girl and her mum but the daughter quickly shoots her daggers in borrowed embarrassment – we know to move on. We’re more prepared for the almost allergic reaction of the only other young people we meet on the walk the following day: two girls in matching tan tracksuits leaving a Mini Cooper scamper past the overly keen, smelly walkers (us), their words “we’re not professional walkers, we have nothing to say!” left lingering on the wind.
Today’s route throws us challenges. We scramble along paths long gone now and through barrages of thorny bush and over barbed wire we’re forced to scissor kick, assisted by an overturned red bucket we pull up for leverage.
We meet our first cows on the trip who take momentary pause from feeding to eye us suspiciously, their tufty quiffs wobbling.
We shortcut across Loch Fitty. The regality of a pair of swans appearing to levitate across this man-made body of water is almost cartoonish.
We’d thought a lot about St Ninians before being here – first a former opencast mine, and secondly a never-complete Scottish World Project designed by the landscape architect Charles Jencks.
It’s unmistakable from far away, its circular cement structures mounting the two artificial hills. Retired from its former designs, now it’s a languishing and eerie ‘xenotopia’ – not quite something and not quite nothing.
It’s subject of great titillation amongst developers, poised to become ‘an eco-therapy wellness centre’.
For the charity RAWS (Remembering the Accused Witches of Scotland), it is the site for a national monument to remember and honour the 4,000 Scottish women murdered for witchcraft.
Wellness and witches.
We beeline for the top up the vertical summit missing the ‘walnut whip’ – the paths that spiral the mound – to catch up with four members of a Tuesday retiree walking club.
We record our conversation whilst one man grins snapping away with his camera and large lens – an expedition sighting! A content swap!
“Are you twitchers?”, they ask. “Keep your eyes peeled for herons,” they say.
Over the brow we arrive in Kelty, where Vanessa in purple leather flares with thick black bangs scoops us up in her car to give us a drive-thru tour of the town and its murals, which she presides over with a crew of graffitists.
She parks up next to her Beast of Blairadam in the style of a Chinese tattoo, where she brilliantly recalls her chance meeting of the fabled cat that stalks the area.
Back at her house we meet husband Steve who wears big sunglasses inside. He hopes to apply to MasterChef, newly retired from decades working on oil rigs.
The walk to Kinross is even more trying than this morning: repeatedly stopped in our tracks as our path dissipates into a private garden or is engulfed by agricultural land, we balance between ditches and spiky sheaths of wheat.
Try as we might to keep to the path, it’s like our bodies are repelling magnets, continuously expunged back onto the roadside curb.
We catch a dissatisfying glimpse of Loch Leven behind barbed wire – the water repelling us now too, teasingly just in sight.
We’re spat out into the carpark of a cashmere factory and onto the chocolate box highstreet of Kinross, offering a clear route once more.
Follow the route taken from Dunfermline to Kinross here.
PART III continued: Kinross to Milnathort
Jimmy sits cross-legged in quiet contemplation outside of Unorthodox Roasters.
He asks us if we know him from a local news article, in which he’s pictured cycling in precariously windy conditions.
Today he wears the characteristic high vis jacket with brown cords, a tiny plait of grey hair secured with a red ribbon peeping beneath his hat.
He devotes his day to gardening and reading, having been a butler his whole professional life.
The barista asks if we’re walking through the Glenfarg Railway Tunnels accessible only by torchlight. Sometimes, he tells us, there are raves there.
May kickbacks on the sofa to speak to her sister just out of surgery.
The barista says that Robert Macfarlane is his hero and he hopes to do a Slow Way walk too.
I rub and poke a newly acquired throb in my hips and contemplate – without looking – the blisters forming around my ankles.
Nancy, my grandfather’s carer, told me she looks after her patients with the delicacy of hatching ‘eggs’. I fear my feet are starting to become scrambled.
The sun is low and we are filled with chocolatey zest.
The Muirs Corner-Stone’s plaque marks 118.37metres above sea level, where all Ordnance Survey measurements in the area are taken from. The sea – a shapeshifting unknown – the relativity used to know distance.
As Kinross melts into Milnathort, May speaks of another journey – one to get an European visa – and the necessary documents to prove her Grandmother’s asylum unearthed from Kew Garden archives.
Follow the route taken from Kinross to Milnathort here.
PART IV: Milnathort to Bridge of Earn
A young farmer nurses her lamb with an infected nose.
Larks start to sing as the sun settles over rolling hills. The stems of wind turbines grow into vision as we ascend, no longer floating heads.
We try to ignore the throb in our legs and the rub of our feet as we make it to Glenfarg in the dark.
We miss the last number 55 community bus of the day, and instead get the regular one to Bein Inn which has its own stop.
May realises this is the community run bus she’s recently read about, having started after the local Glenfarg to Kinross service was axed.
At last lethargy is free to flood over us, as is blood from my sores trapped by sodden socks.
We soak in the bath, beer and whisky, and devour the third portion of pork of the day.
Listen to the recordings from the day three below:
Morning greets us with the quiet and worrying stiffness of our bodies. The day looms ahead.
We can’t face the fetters of our walking boots so slip on crocs and trainers.
Our muscles start to loosen, drip fed with coffee from a thermos, as we meet the morning hills, ever changing with the rising sun.
We crane our heads upwards towards a ‘farm’ of wind turbines licking the dawning sky in apocalyptic idly.
Their ‘swoosh’ is barely perceptible up close, and even the sheep gather between them quietly during this slither of stolen morning. Monster, man and animals in a zen diagram of quiet contemplation.
There’s a Macbeth performance currently on in which the witches are disembodied voices heard through headphones, seemingly to appear from your own head.
I can’t help but jack my ear to the sky, searching for the turbine’s knowable trace.
Signage for Wallace Road directs us across a field, the path fielding an old drywall, past the long neglected foundations of a house over a twinkly stream.
We hop through bog.
I’ve been dreaming of a breakfast filled with greens and grains in Bridge of Earn spotted on Instagram – but it’s closed.
We turn to our now good friend, the egg and sausage bap, made by Sue who blinks behind thick eyelashes framed by shiny blonde hair.
We press our faces against the glass counter to gaze upon mounds of macaroni and stovie, and stacked lorne sausage under clingfilm.
Follow the route taken from Milnathort to Bridge of Earn and read the reviews here.
PART V: Bridge of Earn to Perth
We experience the first spittings of rain as we stop in our tracks while I battle with bad reception on a call to change my train, accepting the goliath optimism of this walk.
I shout each number of my debit card down the line in absurd parody.
The message from the line operator arrives in oscillating audibility: “When you fail, try and try again!”, he philosophises patiently.
A couple tells us that the springs around here were famed for their restorative minerality, bathed in as far back as 1711. The soft drink brand Schweppes took over the springs in 1910 before a terrible fire forced them to close the bottling operation.
We huff and puff by the biggest hill of the journey, rewarded by our first sightings of Perth which appears deceptively near now.
From here, the bridges over River Tay are cute and small.
The catastrophic collapse of the Tay Bridge in 1879, killing everybody on board, inspired the over-engineered latticing aesthetic of the Forth Bridge we crossed on our first day.
We read about the architect responsible for the Tay disaster and find that he ominously died 18 months later.
The country and city is melded together with scrap yards, industrial warehouses, and golf courses. Greyness is refracted throughout the sky.
We reach our final destination, Perth, victorious and overwhelmed.
We don’t rest long before we’re on the train speeding back south, undoing the distance we have walked rapidly, like a completed roll of film wound back into its bobbin in a singular snap.
The next day we text each other, admitting we haven’t achieved anything much more than TV in bed.
I feel dissatisfied trying to communicate what the walk was like to friends: “It was epic!”, I rant. But I’m also exhausted and tearful.
I only realise retrospectively what the walk provided and – a bit like fitness – how quickly it is undone.
Constant walking and moving landscapes created a perfect channel for thoughts to flow in and then out. They do not stay or flood the brain like unwelcome lodgers. Memories of my Grandfather, for instance, came and then went like a comforting visitor.
An Old English word uht-cearu translates to ‘early morning cares’: the kind of worries that are gone by breakfast. On this walk, I’m unplagued by even these, my mornings dictated by the needs of my body and the weather outside.
I learned to understand what Maggie Nelson means in The Argonauts when she says “I like physical experiences that involve surrender.”
Life after a Slow Ways walk is remembering this feeling: to resync with how time passes outdoors and then, to surrender.
Follow the route taken from Bridge of Earn to Perth and read the reviews here.
Lily Wakeley, May Robson, and Hannah Ustun met a decade ago studying at Edinburgh University. Lily Wakeley is a freelance writer and Welsh BAFTA-winning filmmaker (for the film Heart Valley). May is a podcast producer. She previously worked at the New Statesman and has just launched her latest podcast series with the BBC called The Commons, where she speaks to the communities in Scotland making ‘small revolutions’ in how we live, play and eat. May and Lily previously made the documentary NHS Borderlands together, which explores the human cost of the hostile environment in the NHS. They share a love of storytelling that centres the experience of unlikely characters doing extraordinary things, to draw attention to systemic structures. Hannah lives and works as an artist in Edinburgh. Most crucially, May, Hannah and Lily are great friends, and had great fun sharing this adventure together!
Will we connect all of Britain’s 70 cities with verified routes before the end of summer?
Slow Ways is an inter-town network, joining up 2500 settlements across the whole of Britain. So what’s this intercity network we’re on about? It’s a skeleton network of priority routes chosen to join all of the official cities to each other. Getting it all verified gives us a good milestone to aim for in this huge national project, it joins up the most populous places, and it creates long trails to many corners of the country.
The maps below show the brilliant progress we are making with it.
The intercity network includes 985 individual Slow Ways routes averaging 13km (8 miles) each. 61% are triple-checked, verified and shown in purple. It is possible to walk verified routes from Edinburgh to Plymouth. Edinburgh to Plymouth!
You can explore the intercity map here, with links to all of the routes. Or scroll down for links to the top priority routes.
The routes on the map are current choices. If routes fail or better options become available we’ll swap them in. If you are looking to walk and review a route, do make sure it’s the best possible option.
Thanks to call-outs in recent newsletters Liverpool, Chester, Wrexham, Bradford, Cambridge and Ely are all better connected to the inter-city network.
We’d love your help to connect more places.
How can I help?
Have you walked the Great Glen recently? You might be able to verify these three (1, 2, 3) routes between Fort Augustus and Fort William!
Or have you explored West Highland Way or Loch Lomond and the Trossachs? You might be able to review and verify one of these five (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) routes between Milngavie and Tyndrum.
Here are lots more targeted suggestions! Could you walk review any of these? Do you know anyone nearby who might be able to help?
The Swansea to Port Talbot route has been on the priority list for a while, and was verified a few days ago. Welcome to the intercity network, Swansea!
If you are in another part of the country and want help choosing a good route to walk and review, you can join our Discord forum and ask on the ‘welcome’ channel. There are volunteers there to find out what length and challenge level you want from your walk, and they can help choose a route near you to get you started.
Photos from the first review of Chichester to Bognor. It’s still on the priority list above, and needs one more review to be verified!
We sent risograph artists out to walk Slow Ways because why not?
“Never been to Alvechurch before but having only recently moved to Redditch I haven’t seen many places around here! Starting in a light but forgiving dusting of moisture, we set out along a simple and straight road – just in the wrong direction! NO WAY JOSE! We’re better than that and found our way through soggy long grass, up Fag Hill to watch as the night crept in. Alpacas or llamas waiting amongst rows of FSC trees. A steep, a short, a long, a tall, a bushy and a barren mix of roads. Guided by electric fences to keep the horses in… or to keep whatever the **** that was that just rumbled in the bushes out?!
How is the mission coming on? Here’s a layer-by-layer guided tour through the opportunities and priorities of the network. Spoiler alert: it’s going GREAT!
I love watching Slow Ways grow and its roots deepen.
Step by step, route by route, day by day, we’re developing something very special. I strongly believe that Slow Ways is not just a walking and wheeling network. It’s a network for all the great things that walking does for our bodies, minds, communities, climate and nation.
I walk Slow Ways because I love getting outside, exploring new places, being active and spending time either with other people or with my own thoughts.
I take the time to review Slow Ways because I enjoy boosting other people’s inspiration or confidence to follow the same route. For many people the reassurance of knowing that other people recommend a route can mean the difference between trying it or not. And that makes sense. After all, who really wants to get stuck or have to turn around?
Some people leave long and detailed route reviews on our website. These are fantastic and very welcome. Tiny-single-sentence reviews are welcome too. We’d rather someone shared “I loved walking this route!” than left no review at all. Even this small piece of enthusiasm could tip the balance towards someone walking the route.
We want everyone everywhere to be able to use and benefit from Slow Ways. Our initial ambition is for every town and city to have a complete set of verified and surveyed routes.
We would love your help with that mission. To get involved, simply choose, walk and review routes from the Slow Ways website.
Each month we release our ‘progress map‘ which shows a snapshot of how we’re getting on. In this post I’ll share some key layers from the map and explain how you can help us hit that ambitious goal.
Key layers from the progress map
These images show layers, but you can click between them and explore for yourself on the progress map here.
⬆ This first map shows 2,500 towns, cities and hubs that we are working to connect.
⬆ On this map you can see over 9,500 potential routes that have been drafted by hundreds of volunteers. The fun job now is to walk, run, wheel, check and review all the routes to make sure they’re good enough to be included in the network.
The routes add up to nearly 140,000km – which is a long way for a single person, but light work if enough people get involved.
⬆ This is what we’ve verified so far. You can walk from Edinburgh to Plymouth on verified (triple-checked) routes.
If 30 people from every town and city got involved we could verify the entire network in a single day.
We’ve made much more progress than that though.
⬆ The map above shows the 5,000 routes that have received positive reviews so far.
⬆ And this is an incredible map. It shows a network of nearly 4,000 walking routes that have received either 4- or 5-star reviews. It’s nearly possible to walk from Inverness to Land’s End on these highly rated routes.
Imagine if every single village, town, city and key destinations across the country were connected by 4 or 5 star routes?
⬆ On the progress map you can explore a layer of ‘Snail me!’ routes that are primed to be verified. These routes should need just one more positive review to be verified.
⬆ Some primed routes make long-distance trails, like this one connecting the Cotswolds and the Chilterns from Gloucester over to Henley-on-Thames. This would make a great hike or run for someone!
⬆ Other primed routes that are ready to be snailed radiate out from places. Someone in Devil’s Bridge could make a big difference to Mid-Wales over four days by checking these four routes.
You can help with Slow Ways anywhere in the country where we have routes.
⬆ Our goal for this summer is to complete this intercity walking network that connects all of Britain’s 70 official cities. All the pink sections are already verified. Could you help with one of the grey gaps?
We’ll be publishing another progress map next month. Let’s see how many more people, places and communities we can bring together between now and then.
Consider doing one or more of these things to help. It’ll be fun and worthwhile!
Walk, run, wheel and review a route
Share Slow Ways with your real or virtual networks (if online we are @slowwaysuk and use #slowways)
Get a story into your local media (email [email protected] if you’d like to do this and need some help)
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