If you don’t know what there is, how can you protect it? Sarah Woods guides us through a walk in flowers
I walked the 81 miles from Sanquhar to Carlisle in the middle of July – the perfect season to catch a huge number of plants in flower.
It is incredibly important to understand what grows wild where; it’s hard to support and protect species if you don’t understand their habitats, distribution and character. Avenues of human travel, such as Slow Ways routes, often throw up interesting species, and walking with others (whether fully fledged botanists or beginners on a treasure hunt) brings a community and excitement to your finds.
I walked with my friends Anna and Cressida (see another of our Slow Ways walks here). Our plan was to record as many different species as possible, submitting the data to the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (@BSBIbotany) to add to their database of botanical records, that helps support research and conservation.
We saw invasive species that have escaped from gardens or are spreading under their own steam (often thanks to unintentional human activity) along the route, but also plenty of encouraging native and neophyte species; everything from daisies to orchids. The pick of the finds was spotting Jacob’s Ladder (Polemonium caeruleum), a fascinating lilac-purple flowering plant that has been recorded less than 800 times in history in Scotland, and only six times before in Dumfriesshire.
To illustrate our discoveries, I created this scrollable collage of photos of the recorded species (including a few non-plants!). Enjoy!
Sarah Woods
Sarah is Fundraising and Engagement Manager for the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland, and in the words of her friend Cressida, “Sarah is the most active person I know. She plays in numerous sports teams, and spends every spare moment hiking. She is never short of facts about plants and nature. She’s exceptionally wise, easy-going and adventurous.”
Sarah, Cressida, and their friend Anna walked another trail of Slow Ways, 80 miles through Northumberland from Berwick to Alnwick, and you can read that very moving tale here.
Welcome! This is a big and exciting initiative that is taking root, and we are delighted that you have found your way here and are interested in getting involved. Scroll on down to find a series of how-to videos that will help you get going.
Slow Ways is a crowd-sourced national walking network for everyone to enjoy
Our mission is to create the national infrastructure needed to help people walk more often, further and for more purposes. Our routes link up every town and city in Great Britain as well as many villages and every national park. We believe that all of us should be able to walk safely, reliably and directly to any neighbouring community, so we’re working to make that happen.
There is a Slow Way near you!
Thousands of volunteers have drawn over 9,000 routes connecting 2,500 places and now we need help to walk, review and survey them to make sure that they really work on the ground.
Wembley to Kilburn Slow Way, known as Wemkil from the first three letters of each place name. Photo by Louise
That’s huge! Is it possible?
Each route needs to be triple checked. To achieve that massive goal we need the nation to help! The good news is that we are already well on the way – a third of routes are already triple-checked and verified, and over 60% of all Slow Ways have a route that has been walked and reviewed once. It’s really taking off! Fancy being part of this? Keep reading, or look for a route near you from the homepage or our Android or iPhone apps.
Join a welcome talk
We have regular welcome talks to help you get started, meet other people who are interested in Slow Ways, and give you a chance to ask questions. Register for a welcome talk here. We also have monthly Q&A sessions for whatever is puzzling you, or just to meet other people who are getting involved. Please join us!
Keep up to date
There are several ways to keep up to date with Slow Ways:
Please register on this website. Your account will record your walks and reviews, your overall distance, how many routes you’ve helped verify, and lots more lovely stats
Sign up to our newsletter too – it’s not too frequent and always full of exciting progress
Here’s a comprehensive get-started guide to help you understand what Slow Ways is exactly, and how to get going. Read it here or download it with the button below – it’s super useful for emailing to friends to encourage them to see the network-building light!
If you like the sound of the network and want to challenge yourself to do as many kilometres on Slow Ways routes as you can in 2024, our Big Slow Ways Challenge is for you! Collect enamel snail badges as you pass distance markers – 50km, 100km, 250km, and a whopping 500km! A whole bunch of people have already passed 500km, which is incredible! And there’s still five months of 2024 left. Could you go the distance and help create the network too? Find out more about the Challenge.
Volunteer with us: become a Wayfarer
Want to really help grow the network? Why not join our supportive online community of volunteers? Wayfarers commit to walking five routes in their local area, join their local team on our Discord platform, help identify local priority routes, and get other people started filling in the gaps. Be invited to Wayfarer meet-ups online and in person, and watch the network thrive with your help! More on Wayfaring here.
Video how to guides
Through the series of videos below, Cristie will talk you through the process of signing up to the site, choosing and downloading a route, and leaving your first review (they really needn’t be long!).
Step 1: Sign up to Slow Ways! It’s free and easy
Having an account allows you to leave reviews, track the numbers of routes you’ve walked on your own dashboard, and create shareable waylists (route collections for future plans).
Sign up here, or watch the video for help with signing up.
Step 2: Find and download the route
You can use our iPhone app or our Android app on your phone to find and navigate a Slow Ways route.
Alternatively you can find a route you’d like to walk, from our homepage. If you like you can download the GPX file and open it on another navigation app.
Or you could go old-school and either print the map via the Inkatlas option on each route page, or simply draw it onto a paper Ordnance Survey map.
You can use the Slow Ways website to search for a route in your local area or further afield. If you’re just getting started, you can try walking a route that’s already been reviewed so that you know what to expect! Feeling bold? Be the first to pioneer a route that has no reviews.
Step 3: Walk the route!
Now for the best bit – walk a route! During your journey you can take some photos. You can add these to your review later on.
You don’t have to walk the whole route in one day. You can break a route into a number of sections and then post a review when you’ve completed all of them.
Step 4: Leave a review!
It’s easy to leave a review. Simply find the route you walked, scroll down the page and click ‘review this route’. You can then give it a star rating and add a review.
It can be as long or short as you like! Is it a viable route? Did you enjoy it? Did you face any challenges? What was the weather like? Did you have any interesting encounters or discover any gems along the way? Share them with the next walker!
If you find that a route isn’t possible to walk, you can upload a new GPX file via the ‘Suggest a better route’ function or write about the issue in your review so that others know how to get around it.
Step 5: Create a waylist
You can create a waylist collection of your dream routes and journeys and plan them using Slow Ways! You can make your waylist public to share it with others too.
Part of the fun of using Slow Ways is planning purposeful adventures. Join routes end to end to create long trails wherever you’d like to go, or make a waylist to group together lots of themed routes. Your waylist could be a holiday plan, a hit-list of routes in your local area, or a big idea to share with a friend.
This is the Intercity Network – priority Slow Ways routes that join up all of the 70 cities in Britain. Find out more here
Click the button below for more in-depth how-to guides from Cristie to help you on your Slow Ways journey.
What is going on when the people at one end of a single route live ten years longer than the people at the other end? Heiba Lamara looks at five Slow Ways that pass through areas of extreme wealth inequality
According to research by the New Economics Foundation over 90% of the UK’s most deprived communities are within one mile of a Slow Ways route. And cheek-by-jowl with many of these communities lie their extreme opposites. This stark wealth inequality is at the root of the most pressing issues facing the UK, and the world, today.
In the pictures uploaded by reviewers as they walk the A to B of their route, it’s not uncommon to see significant changes to the neighbourhoods and the surroundings they have captured. Photos record journeys from bustling high streets to boarded-up residential streets, well-kept town squares to littered and neglected canal-side paths. There are differences along a straight line.
In their TikTok series for Slow Ways, Virginie Assal observed the proximity in Manchester between green urban spaces in wealthy neighbourhoods, and notably less green space in more impoverished neighbourhoods. Slow Ways routes which pass through great wealth disparity inadvertently provide a transect of social variety, as this variety is made all the more significant in communities close enough to be connected by foot.
The most recent findings by the Office for National Statistics provide a detailed picture of disparities within English local authorities to a neighbourhood level. We have attempted to pinpoint five examples of A to B routes across the Slow Ways network which cross areas of noted wealth disparity. See them below, and on a Waylist map here.
Observing how these areas interact, how gentrification is at work, how art finds its spaces, how segregation occurs, how anger and lack of choices are expressed, leads to important questions as to how and why inequality in the UK makes itself apparent in the most basic material conditions of everyday life.
Whichever half of ‘the other half’ you find yourself in, we hope that walking these routes provides a foothold to a greater understanding of the social fabric of the UK at this moment in time.
Canary Wharf to Stratford
The gleaming towers of Tower Hamlets’ Canary Wharf, headquarters of banks including Morgan Stanley, Barclays, HSBC and JP Morgan and their corporate wealth, sit just ten minutes from neighbourhoods around Poplar, which experience the highest rate of child poverty in London (Poverty Profile, Trust For London 2021). The continuous building development sites around East London have fashioned these two former docklands into proximate but incredibly different spaces.
The historic university city ofCambridge is known for its internationally renowned campuses, multi-million-pound city-centre properties and affluent neighbourhoods – bringing income and employment to the south of the city. Impcan one passes through the least deprived area, Central and West Cambridge, and northwards, close to the area with the highest number of households deprived in at least one dimension, King’s Hedges.
Kensington and Chelsea is often misunderstood by those familiar with Sloane Street, Kensington Gardens or perhaps Channel 4’s ‘Made in Chelsea’ as a uniformly wealthy borough. It is in fact a borough of extremes with, at one point in recent years, three wards in the ‘top 20 least deprived’ and three in the ‘top 20 most deprived’. It was these extremes which provided the backdrop to the tragic Grenfell Tower fire in 2017.
North of Liverpool city centre, and south of wealthy and desirable Formby, a commuter town home to footballers and celebrities, lies Bootle, a port town and one of Merseyside’s most deprived areas. A ‘health gap’ splitting Sefton means people in Bootle die around twelve years earlier than those in the north of the borough, with poverty, unemployment and poor housing just some of the issues blighting the community.
While some areas of Stockton-on-Tees are of the most deprived in Teeside, Yarm is known to be one of the most wealthy, attracting tourists from across Yorkshire and beyond with its historic buildings, independent shops and riverside location.
Wealth inequality in the UK is high and rising. By traversing different areas, we can better understand the challenges faced by those living in different locations, to feel connected to the rest of the UK at a time when communities are being divided, and to campaign for better infrastructure, higher living standards, more amenities, access to nature, and opportunities for all. And helping to create Slow Ways might actually help to close some of the inequality gaps – walking can improve health and potentially increase life expectancy, and building knowledge of ways to walk must help.
Heiba Lamara is an artist-researcher exploring independent print and archival practices.
She co-founded OOMK Publishing House and is assistant editor of OOMK Zine, a biannual publication that champions the art and activism of women from marginalised communities. She is co-founder of Rabbits Road Press, a community-focused risograph studio that provides printing and book binding services for artists and community groups in Newham and beyond.
She incorporates project-based research around print, oral histories, archives and coloniality into zines, artist books and workshops. These offer a closer relationship with under-explored topics related to the cultural history of marginalised communities, using independent publishing methods as entry points.
What to expect when blazing a new trail right across the North, and how we told the tale in film, silver and 35mm photography
[This story is the next in the Trails series. Slow Ways invited people to apply to assemble a group of friends and walk a multi-day trail of routes. They could submit the story of their adventure in whatever form they liked. Read on for Polly, Emerald and Gemma’s six-day bog soup story, written by Emerald Brampton-Greene.]
“You must be walking Hadrian’s Wall?” ask the locals we meet. “Er, not exactly…” I reply with a grin. It’s a good guess as we’re only a few kilometres from the iconic national trail. Instead our team of three are taking the road less travelled. An A-to-B, city-to-city adventure, ’trailblazing’ from Carlisle to Newcastle using footpaths, trails and roads to audit the as yet unwalked route for the Slow Ways network.
The aim is to root walking as a form of transport in the collective imagination. It’s fun to have this conversation with strangers. Reactions tend towards either curiosity or confusion. I get it. It’s my first Slow Ways and I’m puzzled about what lies ahead.
Our cross-country route runs from west to east and connects a string of villages and towns including Brampton, Haltwhistle, Hexham, Corbridge and Prudhoe. Slow Ways allocates each section a name using the first three letters of the two settlements walked between (e.g. Carlisle to Brampton = Carbra). Carbra, brahal, halhex, hexcor, corpru and blannew; I enjoy this place name mashup that sounds like an incantation. Our path weaves along the Tyne Valley, crossing and recrossing the river, the railway and A-roads.
The trail that Polly. Emerald and Gemma took from Carlisle to Newcastle, eight Slow Ways long. See the live Waylist here
Setting off from sleepy Carlisle — the city nursing a hangover from the Euros final the night before — we pass from urban to suburban to rural. It’s the height of summer and everything is overgrown. Time to get a forage on. Our pace dwindles as we pause to stash meadowsweet and linden tree blossoms in our bags for brewing later. Tuning into the landscape and catching up on each other’s stories from the past few months, we fall into an easy rhythm.
We are known as The Boglins
‘No path, no problem’ becomes our mantra on day two. Walking from Brampton to Haltwhistle we pitstop at a brilliant community cafe in Hallbankgate. A local advises us against walking the busy A3689 so we improvise and follow a footpath along an old trainline. Although it’s clearly marked on the map, it’s a different story on the ground. We end up in marsh grass that is chest height. Bushwhacking isn’t ideal – still, I welcome the reminder of how quickly nature takes over given half a chance. The route climbs up to reach the western end of the fells, where awesome views across the Pennines open up. My eye is drawn to a pine plantation on the horizon, with a deep V cutting a corridor straight through the middle. As we head for this striking landmark the conditions underfoot turn from mud to bog soup. For the next few kilometres I am wading rather than walking. Now we are known as The Boglins. We eventually tumble into Haltwhistle mud-splattered, knackered and wearing sandwich bags on our feet.
“Three women walking!” a farmer exclaims as we emerge from the bushes at the end of her garden
The sun shines down as we move between farmland, woodland and riverside on days three and four. These rural routes feel a bit like time travel. The paths are quiet and there’s long stretches where we don’t see a soul. I get caught up imagining the people who formed these paths over the centuries. “Three women walking!” a farmer exclaims as we emerge from the bushes at the end of her garden. It’s not just humans that are surprised to see us. Making our way through dense vegetation in Gees Wood we walk into a huge flock of partridges. We tread quickly and lightly, the feeling that this is their place and we’re just passing through. A similar sense arises when we startle a Roe deer on the path ahead.
A hidden gem is discovered between Corbridge and Prudhoe. Dilston Physic Garden is a two-acre garden, devoted to educating on medicinal plants for health and mental wellbeing. It’s a beautiful, rambling site — an array of scents, colours and textures. I slip off my sweaty walking boots and pad around barefoot. To my delight the labels offer herbal, medicine and folklore descriptions. I spot plants that we’ve seen growing wild this week, like yarrow, and am excited to learn that ‘witches are said to fly by wearing a sprig of yarrow in their cap.’
The world speeds up again
On reaching Prudhoe we realise that we’re running out of time to make it to Newcastle, so we jump on the train. The world speeds up again. I feel giddy. The joy of arriving into our destination city is amplified by the fact that we have (almost) walked here using our all-terrain vehicles, our feet. Time for a pint. We dump the bags and head to the river to join the crowds who are soaking up the evening sun. The next morning we hit the streets with thousands of others for Newcastle Pride. Music, dance, parade, celebration. It’s electric.
A talisman ring
Back in Bristol we sit around Polly’s kitchen table and I watch carefully as she demonstrates how to carve into the wax using sculpting tools. It’s tricky at first and then satisfying when you’ve got the knack. The finished pieces will be sent off to be cast in silver.
It’s a meditative process and I let my thoughts unfurl in the mind as I carve freehand. I’m thinking about wayfinding, navigating your thirties and managing a chronic health condition. I settle on the obvious but satisfying four points of a compass.
For sure my ring becomes something of a talisman. A reminder of bogs conquered. Also, the tenderness of old friends’ company, curiosity for the places in between and the benefits of deceleration.
Polly Collins is a silversmith based out of Centrespace Studios in Bristol. In future she plans to hold workshops that explore journeying, ceremony and ring-making. To register your interest you can email her. For more of her work click here.
Gemma Luxton is an illustrator and print designer based in Bristol.
Author and ‘extreme rambler’ Ursula Martin compares her walk to George Borrow’s 170 years ago. Will she be rude about redheads too?
In 1854, George Borrow set off on a walk from Machynlleth to Devil’s Bridge as part of his extended perambulation around Wales documented in the book Wild Wales which still remains in print today. Inspired, I decided to follow the Slow Way Macdev, a route which runs between his same start and finish points.
It’s difficult to determine whether Macdev follows the same route. If I wanted to truly do as Borrow did, I would ask the ostler in the courtyard of the Wynnstay Hotel for directions. I would then walk up into the hills with a few sparse placenames to aim for. Without compass or map, Borrow asked as he walked along, approaching the residents of the scattered houses he saw and questioning whether he was on the right route. People gave him directions by the shape of the land, not its roads.
George Borrow, Wikicommons
The Wynnstay Hotel is still in place, serving good dinners, but the horses are gone from the yard. Instead of asking people who probably would not know, I download a route map onto my pocket computer and set out to walk in the glowing sweetness of a spring morning.
The path skirted the golf course, rolling out on a springtime carpet of old bracken, tufts of sheep’s wool and lichen and last year’s leaves, oak and beech. It was the early days of sunshine, hot and bright; the new leaves’ growth fuzzed the lightest of neon mesh onto the bare branches, tree skeletons still visible.
An English ‘gentleman’
The route goes from one river valley to another, up from Machynlleth and the river Dyfi into the high mountain lands around Plynlimon, the highest point of Mid-Wales. It eventually drops down to the Mynach valley and the hamlet of Devil’s Bridge, containing a few scattered houses, a large hotel, a steam train station, a waterfall, a gorge walk, and a bridge. Three bridges actually, built one over the other in increasing heights up the gorge. Layers of history in plain view, from plodding hooves and feet to thundering wheels.
I thought of this walk as a way to retrace the steps of George Borrow, an Englishman who went for long walks around Wales. I was more interested in his journey than I was in his perceptions of those he met along the way — he was prone to making patronising remarks about the people he encountered. There’s a lot of value in his book, detailed descriptions of rural Wales and its people in an under-documented era, but crikey, the Victorian English snobbishness and superiority is a bit hard to stomach.
There’s a lot of value in his book, detailed descriptions of rural Wales and its people in an under-documented era, but crikey, the Victorian English snobbishness and superiority is a bit hard to stomach
Here’s Borrow talking about a dodgy peddlar he encounters before proceeding to be rude about red-haired people:
Suddenly I found myself close to a man who stood in a hollow part of the road, from which a narrow path led down to the house; a donkey with panniers stood beside him. He was about fifty years of age, with a carbuncled countenance, high but narrow forehead, grey eyebrows, and small, malignant grey eyes. He had a white hat, with narrow eaves and the crown partially knocked out, a torn blue coat, corduroy breeches, long stockings and highlows. He was sucking a cutty pipe, but seemed unable to extract any smoke from it.
He had all the appearance of a vagabond, and of a rather dangerous vagabond. I nodded to him, and asked him in Welsh the name of the place. He glared at me malignantly, then, taking the pipe out of his mouth, said that he did not know, that he had been down below to inquire and light his pipe, but could get neither light nor answer from the children.
I asked him where he came from, but he evaded the question by asking where I was going to.
“To the Pont y Gŵr Drwg,” said I.
He then asked me if I was an Englishman.
“Oh yes!” said I, “I am Carn Sais;” whereupon, with a strange mixture in his face of malignity and contempt, he answered in English that he didn’t understand me.
“You understood me very well,” said I, without changing my language, “till I told you I was an Englishman. Harkee, man with the broken hat, you are one of the bad Welsh who don’t like the English to know the language, lest they discover your lies and rogueries.” He evidently understood what I said, for he gnashed his teeth, though he said nothing. “Well,” said I, “I shall go down to those children and inquire the name of the house;” and I forthwith began to descend the path, the fellow uttering a contemptuous “humph” behind me, as much as to say, “Much you’ll make out down there.” I soon reached the bottom and advanced towards the house. The dogs had all along been barking violently; as I drew near to them, however, they ceased, and two of the largest came forward wagging their tails. “The dogs were not barking at me,” said I, “but at that vagabond above.” I went up to the children; they were four in number, two boys and two girls, all red-haired, but tolerably good looking.
It’s not tiresome George I want to think about, but what he saw. The working mine up at Esgair Hir, buildings appearing in the mist, a smoky turf fire, a man who tells him he’s not native to the area but instead comes from Aberystwyth, an entire 12 miles away. The shepherd’s children who run out with a glass of buttermilk for a tired passerby. Descriptions of a people who live on what they keep alive themselves, who almost never leave the places they were born, who get visits from peddlars, who believe in the strong pitiless hand of an almighty God.
Descriptions of a people who live on what they keep alive themselves, who almost never leave the places they were born, who get visits from peddlars, who believe in the strong pitiless hand of an almighty God
I think of the woman dressed in “the ancient Welsh female fashion” who snorts when asked the way to Devil’s Bridge (at that time called Pont y Gŵr Drwg in Welsh, or ‘The Bridge of the Evil Man’ — so they did not have to speak the Devil’s name). She refuses to speak to Mr Borrow, just splaying out her fingers to give him a direction.
Almost 170 years separate us; her inability to have a bank account, to be alone with men that are not her husband, to easily live alone unmarried or control her childbearing. There is more to her experience of life, that I do not begin to understand. How would it be to live in a society so completely controlled by obedience to a Christian God? Would she speak to me if I knocked on the door? In tight bright clothing? With the full outline of my legs on display? With my head uncovered? We would appear as aliens to one another.
The past is now
Once I climb from natural forests I am in the uplands. There are tracks worn through swaying grass. Single trees dotted far away. Seedheads swaying in the brittle breeze. The light and the sun are unrelenting up here, bouncing off the sea of golden grasses, until I feel like cracked glass, splintered and no longer whole. I am the only human for a few hours, walking around the gentle slopes, looking for a lake that takes an age to come into view.
Lone barns are all that’s left of ancient smallholdings. There are no shepherds to speak to. Borrow recounts falling into bogs up to his knees but I walk on tracks around a reservoir, where hectares of waterlogged upland ground has been dammed and flooded into Nant-y-Moch reservoir, used to produce electricity. A hamlet lost underwater, a graveyard twice-buried — years of Welsh land being done in by English masters is woven into George’s sense of superiority.
A hamlet lost underwater, a graveyard twice-buried — years of Welsh land being done in by English masters is woven into George’s sense of superiority
The roar of present society is quieter in the uplands. There are no cars, no shops, no people, no phone signal to crash a wave of clicks over me that distract the senses and fragment me into the wash of a thousand stories. Just dry yellow grass that bounces underfoot, and the occasional sheep nosing about contentedly, deep in their shaggy coat.
Here, the tumbled stones of a cottage speak louder than they would ‘out there’, down in the lowlands where humans thrive. Up here the stones tell the story of hard lives and cold winter winds, of shawls wrapped around shoulders and wizened apples stored in the dark. They tell of carts, the slow clop of a pony coming home from a visit out to town, sugar and flour in paper bags, dinner ladled from a pot that has been swung to hang from chains over the fire.
I camp up there, by a lake where the geese splash down with the sunset. Two vans bump their way slowly to the edge of the water. I imagine the beds inside, the pots and pans shifting and swaying. The sense of remote wilderness here is an illusion — I’m only five miles from a main road and came up here once with a boyfriend to learn paddleboarding. The vans don’t stay, and I have the peace of the nighttime to myself; I watch the light dilute into deep black and say hello to the placid sheep in the first movements of early dawn.
A simple life
I’d been working too hard, trying to write a book while getting bogged down by ominous news of world war and climate chaos. This walk made me remember joy again. Living life like this is very pure and straightforward: sit and eat at road edge, enjoy the sunshine, fill water from stream, get up and leave. Easy, that’s all there is. My entire task was to walk from one place to another and enjoy it, nothing else to fill my time but admiration of birds and flowers.
There is a simple joy to walking as far as you can in a day. Walking until you’re exhausted. Until the sweat slipping into your eyes makes you stop to blow a bit and take a swig from your water bottle. Walk into the afternoon until you think you can’t any more, until you throw down your bag in a beautiful patch of grass and lie there, full length, under the quiet branches of surrounding trees.
Walk into the afternoon until you think you can’t any more, until you throw down your bag in a beautiful patch of grass and lie there, full length, under the quiet branches of surrounding trees
In these moments I stare dazedly at the twigs and the moss as a small spider climbs and fells innumerable grass blades in a quest you can only guess at. Lie there until you doze a bit, in that face-slapped, shocked-tiredness kind of way and then you get up to walk some more, thinking that your feet will always hurt but they don’t after a while and you go another hour or two while you’re looking for a good place to sleep.
I walked up from Machynlleth into the hinterland, into the wilder world where the trees don’t grow and the water pools in soggy ground, and then down again to Devil’s Bridge, into the wooded valleys where the river splashes and runs towards Cardigan Bay. It took 36 hours but I’m sure you could do it more quickly.
I took my time though, stopped and stared, fell asleep by a lake, admired the hairy bracken unfurling, laughed aloud at the incredible beauty of light on leaves and water, sang songs to the horizon and slogged my way with a grin all the way to the hotel at Devil’s Bridge in time for a good pint and a cheese sandwich. I’m sure George Borrow did too.
Ursula Martin
For the last ten years Ursula has either been walking or writing about walking. She wouldn’t call herself an adventurer, more of an extreme rambler. Her first book, One Woman Walks Wales, is about an ovarian cancer diagnosis and subsequent 3700-mile walk in Wales. Having finished a 5000+ mile walk across Europe, she’s been staying still for a while to write the next book, due to be launched in March 2025. Ursula will be celebrating with a very long walk between bookshops, on Slow Ways! Watch this space…
Inspired to go on your own Slow Ways in Wales? Why not sign up to walk and review Slow Ways. You can also find and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
7 in 10 UK adults think people should be allowed to walk along the edge of privately-owned fields if there’s no safe alternative
Planning a walk? This winter break millions of people will be stretching their legs but might be taking their lives in their hands.
Imagine for a moment you want to walk home from visiting family, a pub, place of worship, hospital, school or shop.
The problem is, the only way to go means walking on narrow or busy roads that are surrounded by privately owned fields. There is no pavement or footpath.
Should walking down the road be your only option?
We conducted a new ground-breaking poll, which found that the majority of people in the country think it shouldn’t be your only option.
7 in 10 UK adults (71%) think that it should be allowed to walk along the edge of fields that are privately owned, as long as they are respectful and responsible, if the only other option is to walk down a narrow or busy road with no pavement or legal footpath.
“Going for a walk in the countryside can mean risking narrow lanes, blind bends and fast vehicles,” explained our founder and CEO, Dan Raven-Ellison.
Two pedestrian deaths per week, every week
“According to the Department for Transport, two pedestrians die and 34 are seriously injured by vehicles on rural roads each week.
The government can save thousands of lives and bring millions of people so much joy by ensuring there is always a safe way to walk.”
The poll also found widespread support for an extensive upgrade to paths and access in the UK.
According to the poll by YouGov, 70% of people support the creation of a national walking network that enables people to safely walk to any address in the UK, with new paths and walking routes being created on private land where necessary.
Slow Ways is a grassroots initiative to develop a national walking network that Raven-Ellison started in 2020.
“Slow Ways is founded on the principle that we should always be able to walk safely and enjoyably to the places we need to get to. We have that expectation for driving places. We should have the same expectation for walking, which is the healthiest, greenest, most inclusive, most affordable and – I think – most enjoyable way of getting around.
“We know there is a need for this. Over the last three years thousands of volunteers have been helping to develop the Slow Ways national walking network. Thanks to their efforts, making use of existing rights of way, we have mapped thousands of walking routes that connect Britain’s towns, cities and national landscapes.
“We know from our work that there are no safe or reasonable footpaths to thousands of Britain’s shops, pubs, schools, villages and homes. The only option people have is to walk alongside traffic on roads and lanes – many of which have replaced the paths people used to travel on foot.
“Like many people, I have experienced the dangers of narrow lanes, fast cars and large lorries first-hand.
“The current situation is no-good for walkers or drivers, neither of whom want to surprise each other at any time of the year.
“The government can make walking places safer and more direct, enjoyable and inclusive for us all.
“While hikers would benefit from improved access, the people who would benefit most of all would be the 10 million people who live in the countryside and feel these issues day-in-day-out. Many people who live in rural areas are surrounded by fields, but effectively live on islands that they can only venture in or out of by car.”
The poll suggests that intervention to make walking safer would not only be popular but would also benefit large numbers of people.
Better walking options could help 27m people
40% of respondents said they were likely to walk more if such a walking network existed. Slow Ways calculated that, projected nationally, that could mean helping 27 million people (40% of the UK’s population) to walk more.
“What a gift to the nation it would be if the government ensured there was always a safe way for people to walk home, see loved ones, be healthy or enjoy connecting with nature.
“Walking can improve our health, save us money, tackle the climate crisis and spread money through the economy. Not helping people to walk to where they want to go just doesn’t make sense!
“It would be a wonderful and inspiring legacy that people could enjoy for generations to come.”
Slow Ways is calling on the government to work with people, groups and organisations across the country to develop an inclusive, extensive and easy to follow national walking network, including this big upgrade in access.
We are inviting the public to help by signing up to volunteer with Slow Ways by sharing and checking possible walking routes between towns and cities, an effort we will be intensifying by connecting more places across the country later in 2025.
With one year ending and another beginning, here’s Daniel Raven-Ellison with reasons to be cheerful, and to keep being ambitious!
I’m Slow Ways founder Dan Raven-Ellison, and I first imagined Slow Ways as an intercity network. It soon became clear to me that it should connect all our towns and villages too.
I’ve since come to the opinion that it should be possible to walk to any address in the country.
If people can drive somewhere, they should be able to walk there too. Right?
So, collaborating to find and share good ways to go is not good enough. We must have new and better rights of way, paths and access too.
I love Slow Ways for its unifying, positive, generous and adventurous spirit. I love how it generates connections, possibilities and opportunities.
But Slow Ways has a deeply serious side too.
Not having a safe, inclusive and connected walking network is too costly – and the cost does not sit on the balance sheet of our government and council’s transport departments. It is being paid for in the length and quality of our lives. Having safe, inclusive and connected walking routes can give people more and better days of life. That’s the prize.
Looking back, 2024 has been another awesome year for Slow Ways. Lots of people use the word ‘awesome’ too easily, but when we’re talking about Slow Ways our effort truly is just that.
Slow Ways started in 2020; people have shared nearly 10,000 walking routes. Added together these routes are 140,000 km (87,000 miles) long. That’s something like 3.5 laps of the equator.
And they’re not just random routes that people have created for an unknown purpose. They have all been designed with a common purpose – to help people walk the best possible routes between communities.
Our community has shared nearly 15,000 route reviews that add up to over 160,000 km (99,000 miles) and nearly 2.5 million words. That’s 166 words per review or 16 words per kilometre.
Thanks to all that reviewing, 5,300 routes have been given good reviews. 4,000 of those have been rated 4 or 5 stars! And we’ve found and surveyed over 1,000km of obstacle free ‘Y’ graded paths.
That work also means that we’ve got 2,200 triple-checked and verified routes, and that includes 63 cities connected to each other in our core intercity network!
In all, a third of the network is now either verified or surveyed.
Here are all of the routes rated four or five stars, or verified:
Wow wow wow! What an incredible team effort. This has only been possible thanks to people like you – reading this, sharing this, chipping-in donations and exploring routes.
I’ve personally loved exploring old and new Slow Ways – and hope you have too. Slow Ways has given me the motivation to explore all kinds of places I would not have otherwise visited, and I’ve really enjoyed connecting up places and routes across South West England and beyond.
We’ve had some other big wins in 2024 too.
We published our new Slow Ways pocket atlas with Urban Good CIC (got your copy yet?), lots of people took up the Slow Ways 2024 walking challenge, we started our Wayfarers volunteering programme and collaborated with lots of groups to share stories from inspiring Slow Ways adventures with both our Tales and Trails projects.
We successfully launched our experimental Make Ways pilot. This was thanks to funding from 545 crowdfunder supporters, Aviva and Paths for All. It’s brilliant seeing good ways, bad ways and wishes for new ways being coloured in across the country. We’ve been doing lots of testing and learning, and you can expect much more from Make Ways next year.
And we’ve loved working with our advisory boards, sounding pools and all the people who have helped to shape our work so far.
Looking forward, we have big plans for 2025.
Now we’ve checked so much of the network, we’re going to be doing more to champion and celebrate great routes. Further into the year we’ll be launching a new, better, stronger, faster and easier to use web platform. Expect things to look very different and feel much better.
You can expect some fun new challenges too!
All of our work over the last 4.5 years has been made possible thanks to gifts of time or money from thousands of people and lots of organisations. If you like what we are doing and would like to support our work financially, please click here to give a one-off or regular donation.
As it’s the end of the year, I’d like to do that perennial and important thing of giving thanks to everyone who’s helped to make Slow Ways the success that it is.
I’d like to thank every contributor and especially those that have challenged themselves to go further! Thank you to everyone who has shared something about Slow Ways and helped to spread the world. Thank you to everyone who has chipped in financially, and especially the National Lottery Community Fund who are our biggest funder and Paths for All who had faith in Make Ways.
And thanks to our brilliant, warm and talented extended past and present team: Hannah, Julian, Dan, Eva, Darren, Ingrina, Ben, Joao, Lara, Richard, Saira, Charlie, Dom, Gary, Rowena, Mohammed, Debbie, Sophia, Yusra and Nia.
Let’s see what we can achieve together in 2025.
See you on a Slow Way?
Daniel
The Welshpool to Shrewsbury Slow Way looking festive in the snow. Needs just one more review!
With a third of the Slow Ways national walking network now ready to enjoy, it’s time to start using it for FUN!
The time around New Year is always a great time to start cooking-up ideas for projects and challenges for the year ahead. It’s a time of renewal and possibility.
There are lots of great reasons to do a walking project. Whether for challenge, health, pilgrimage, raising money for charity, discovery, going further, getting active, being creative, championing a cause, volunteering to check routes for others or just for the sake of it – walking lots of routes is highly rewarding.
Here are 5 ideas for using Slow Ways for a 2025 walking project:
Discover more of your local area
We promised you will find this highly rewarding. Slow Ways are a great way to really get to know your local area or region. Start with one route, then walk another that connects to it. Keep connecting routes and see how much of an area you can explore.
Go on a fractional multi-day adventure
Lots of us want to go on long-distance hikes but can’t. Time, money, relationships and our bodies can all make it hard to be away from home for longer periods of time. Instead of walking a long way in one go, split your days up by walking different Slow Ways over lots of weeks and months.
Enjoy route bagging
Collect as many routes as you can. You could just go for any route or also collect counties, towns or something else.
Get intimate
Get to know one or two routes really well. Walk them every week or month. See how they change over the seasons.
Hike a big A to B
Walk between two cities that are important to you, from one side of our island to the other or even between John o’ Groats and Land’s End.
If you’ve not walked a Slow Way before, just start with trying one route and then try another – see where they take you!
You can use this website and our maps to plan and record your journeys. Try using our Journey Planner to create waylists, play with our routing tool and get yourself a printed Slow Ways map or atlas so you can colour where you are planning to go or where you’ve been.
Later in 2025 we will be launching some big collective challenges, so look out for those! They’ll be fun.
We’d love to know what you are planning and to hear from you while out walking.
Message us on your preferred social media channels and use the hashtag #SlowWays
For most walkers the appeal of walking is in travelling under one’s own steam to discover new sights and sounds, whether filling in the gaps of a lifelong neighbourhood or taking in famous landscapes across the world.
But for the neighbourhood postie the only goal is efficiency, and the only way is repetition. The same streets (‘loops’), the same beat (or ‘duty’), every day, for months or years at a time. Many people who enjoy walking and being outdoors have probably thought they’d love to be a post-person, so what’s it really like?
This summer I found myself with, euphemistically, an unexpected career break, and searching for a part-time job I could fit around artistic pursuits. Still, every cloud has a silver lining. Applying to Royal Mail would have been crazy a year ago but now it seemed like a sensible approach which also ticked off an ‘in-another-life’ pipe dream. It was now time to find out for real.
A note on terminology: although ‘post-person’ doesn’t trip off the tongue as well as postman, this is now the official job title. Royal Mail also encourages the use of the term ‘postie’ as it’s both in common parlance and gender-neutral. Although they’re definitely in the minority, there are a significant number of post-women working at Royal Mail now. There are some challenges for the postie out on delivery that will be slightly more amplified for women, which perhaps explains the continued gender gap. But I wouldn’t be too quick to write a note ‘to the postman’ if I was you!
The interview was relatively stress-free. If you can answer ‘Yes’ to ‘Can you read?’, ‘Can you drive?’ and ‘Can you walk?’ you too can get a post job. Two weeks later, after one day of online training, I was in the depot, delivering, and discovering that the real job was nothing like the training. The old joke people often say is that being a postie is ‘better than walking the streets’, i.e. being unemployed. But it’s not a job for slackers, and just enjoying a flaneur-esque stroll around town will not cut the mustard!
A right royal knees-up
This type of walking is not Slow Ways. It is, in fact, very-bloody-fast ways.
I would say in some ways the best part about going-for-a-walk walking is you can choose to stop or slow down when you want to. The yin to the yang, if you will. But a postie cannot stop or slow down. You must keep going until your load is done. And after that? Well, you’ll do it all again tomorrow.
Day by day that picture of the local area gets filled in further, through repetition. Post is fairly simple, it’s parcels where it gets intricate; the Royal Mail has far more stringent rules on where you can leave parcels than the cheaper delivery companies, and the company relies heavily on its regular posties’ local knowledge to get things done smoothly. Who has an unlocked porch? Who never leaves the house without their car? 44’s never in but the wife’s mother lives at 38 and she’s retired so she’ll take it. Don’t even knock for 22, go straight to 20, but neither of them will talk to 21, there’s bad blood there. And so on. This knowledge helps you shift stuff faster.
In fact the job of a postie is not much like going for a good walk at all. When walking, there’s distance to cover; most walkers probably don’t stop often. In contrast, a postie is stopping every few seconds for doors and gates. There’s a lot of turning on your heel, jumping in and out of the van, driving the van short distances, stopping to close gates and sometimes backtracking. In fact any stretch where one doesn’t have any useful stops is considered a ‘dead walk’, like ‘dead air’ on the radio. With so many steps to do (around 15,000 every day in my case), we don’t really need the extra exercise! But we rarely truly ‘get a pace on’ either, as the stops are so frequent (never more so than at Christmas, where parcels fill the van and greetings cards stuff the mail bundles! And with all leave disallowed in December, there’s no getting out of it).
Also different is your mental state. Allow yourself to get into the walking too much, entering that lovely mind-state walkers get into where we can think over things that are on our mind, and you risk forgetting something important: your next parcel, collection, or special delivery. Despite what some might say, it is a mentally taxing job.
You’ve got to be driven
Gone are the days of the fully-on-foot postie; almost all jobs now require you to drive at least part of the day. We do a mix of walking and driving, in a pattern that appears complicated but, like the rest of the job, becomes second nature as repetitions increase.
Most areas are broken up into one-way or loop walks. Depending on the street layout, workload and van availability, there will be either one or two workers to a van. The van drives to a set point (call it ‘Point A’), and each postie does ‘their’ walk. If one or both of them has a loop walk, they complete it and then drive the van to ‘Point B’. If one of the pair has a one-way walk, they’ll meet the van at ‘Point B’. Post – meaning all letters and any packets small enough to be carried in the satchel bag – is delivered first, and then the van is usually driven around the walk to deliver any additional parcels too large to carry. Some depots have trolleys, but they haven’t proven to be useful in the area we’re in.
Although above I listed literacy, walking fitness and a driving licence as being the prerequisites to being a postie, those are just the entry-level. To become a really good postie, you also have to have charm and most of all a good memory, especially for sets of numbers.
Well-respected postman about town
Like most posties, it’s not the community I live in I serve, but it is one fairly nearby. Like many Slow Ways walks, I knew it to drive or cycle through with some haste but I had never stopped to learn the streets like I do now.
Three months in, it already feels as if I know the community I serve better than the back of my own hand. I’d say this shows the power of walking, of having business with everybody, and of having slight privileges such as being able to enter people’s private property without getting funny looks, getting waved through in traffic, and being able to park on double yellow lines for a short amount of time. As much as everyone says they ‘don’t want those bills’, they’re all quite happy to see the postie, really. For some people, we’re their only regular visitor.
It’s in this ‘community work’ aspect that it’s tempting to romanticise ‘the’ Royal Mail, but we must remember it’s been a private company for over a decade now. You’d be less likely to read an article about, say, being an Evri driver (a job I have also done); there is still a certain sense of duty among posties and respect from the public which your average Amazon driver doesn’t get. Ultimately, although the company still carries the royal crest, that romance is gone along with what once made posting a good job for those pursuing a simpler life. Old-timers speak with whimsy about ‘job and knock’, the practice that rewarded extreme efficiency with an early hometime. In these consumerist times, an early hometime would be a miracle on most duties. Almost everyone, even long-time posties who work 40-hour weeks, are on so-called ‘part-time’ contracts, with overtime a fact of life. So this may not be a job for those who, like me, wanted an easy ride.
Everyone, including Royal Mail’s job adverts, say that being a postie is a great way to stay fit. I’m not sure it’s that simple; there are a lot of long-time postal workers with various musculoskeletal or repetitive strain injuries, and there’s the other factor: imagine feeling that lovely feeling of tiredness after a long walk… every day. It’s difficult to motivate yourself after an exhausting day to, say, work on one’s article-writing sideline, or get out to do some sports.
But despite it all, it’s still a highly enjoyable job. I love the camaraderie at the depot; it’s a far cry from the cut-throat, putting-on-airs-and-graces world of consultancy I’ve recently departed. I love being trusted to literally deliver, I enjoy trying to race my ultra-fit colleague back to the van, I like being trusted to drive a van. I even sometimes love the rainy days as, yin and yang, it only makes the sunny days feel even brighter. I’ve certainly got a lot faster at walking and feel a lot more confident speaking to people than in my mouse-quiet office job. For the first time since I left my job at Slow Ways, I’m having fun at work.
Tom Morris
Tom, formerly editor of the Slow Ways stories blog during 2023, is an active travel activist and qualified transport planner. He is currently working as a postperson while completing a climbing instructor qualification and developing opportunities in theatre, writing, art and journalism.
Tom recently participated in Peak Cymru’s Peak Peers 2024 programme, where a group of young artists explored themes of land access and biodiversity in the Bannau Brycheniog.
The story that Slow Ways storyteller Genevieve Rudd never imagined she’d be writing for us
Genevieve Rudd was a woman who walked, not just for wellbeing but as a part of her work and her art. Less than a year ago, at 34, she learned she had a brain aneurysm. Near-fatal complications from neurosurgery radically altered her life and in the months that followed Genevieve took steps towards learning to walk again. In her latest story, she shares her arduous and inspirational on-going recovery journey.
Life pre-diagnosis
“My name is Genevieve Rudd, I’m 34 years old and I live in Great Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast. I am a community artist with an environmental arts practice. Up until recently, I was totally independent. For more than a decade, I led creative and wellbeing walks, and outdoor nature-connection activities with groups. Walking art formed a big part of my identity.
I have never been short of places to explore on my doorstep, having walked from the coastal edges (Stitches in the water) to the vast marshlands (Hiking alone to one of Britain’s least-used stations) and through the urban areas in between. I was reliant on my mobility to engage in the artistic process of collecting materials whilst walking and immersing myself in environments.
In late 2023 I was diagnosed with a giant brain aneurysm and told I needed urgent neurosurgery, around one month away from my initial consultation.
My face like drooping wax
It was to be sooner than this. A few weeks later I walked into A&E after experiencing strange sensations. One Sunday, I started to feel unwell with very heavy fatigue. My face was tingling over the left-hand side and it felt like drooping wax. I had to ask my husband if it looked different as it felt very different to me. He said it looked like it had slightly dropped on the left side.
I stayed at A&E all of that evening, before being transferred to Addenbrooks hospital in Cambridge by ambulance. I arrived at 3am into a ward of sleeping women. I remember a feeling of extreme anxiety at not wanting to wake them up by my arrival on a stretcher trolley.
I woke up the next morning feeling totally alone and burst into tears. I had been living with an unruptured aneurysm, which was like a bowl of lava in my brain that was at a high risk of boiling over and now here I was in a room full of people presumably going through similar experiences.
I had been living with an unruptured aneurysm, which was like a bowl of lava in my brain that was at a high risk of boiling over and now here I was in a room full of people presumably going through similar experiences
I stayed on the neurosurgery ward for about a week watching as other women went and came back from theirs. I wondered what I would be like after my own surgery. Would I be the woman who looked fine on the outside? Would I be the woman who was constantly sedated or the one crying out in pain?
Every morning I would walk up and down the ward corridor, say hello to the staff and orientate myself. I would take myself on themed walks in the ward such as to search for nature or to read the notice boards. It felt so much easier to have my emotional needs met when I was physically able.
After a while, I was moved to a different part of the ward where I could see more sky, to cloud watch and look over at a group of trees. This was the most nature I could find on the ward.
Whilst I knew the risk of the surgery, I had no choice but to take that risk to save my life. The risk of aneurysm rupture was high and potentially fatal. As the first surgery approached, and to help myself feel more grounded, I walked outside with my parents and hugged a tree.
Whilst I knew the risk of the surgery, I had no choice but to take that risk to save my life
Once I woke up from surgery, I was told that there had been complications, and for a time there was the possibility I would not wake up. An emergency surgical intervention triggered a large stroke. I was faced with a long and difficult recovery.
Can’t get up? Fake news!
Feelings of shock, sadness, surrealness, frustration and a gradual process of realising I was unable to walk or mobilise came over me in waves. I had patches in my memory of my time directly after my surgery, which meant my family had to fill in the gaps.
My left arm felt heavy. I had no sense of it belonging to my body. In my confused state I exclaimed to the staff that someone had left a baby on my stomach. Episodes of impaired ‘proprioception’ (not knowing where my affected-side limbs are) have continued.
Once the confusion began to clear and the anaesthesia wore off, I couldn’t really fathom that I could not walk straight away. My brain was telling me I had just walked up and down the corridor and I got more and more frustrated when my family doubted what I was saying. My brain was mixing up memories from earlier in my hospital stay. This was mixed with some delirium and hallucinations, where I had vivid conversations with my friends who were not really there.
I was constantly forgetting I was unable to do even small tasks. My husband has told me I couldn’t understand why nobody would let me get up and go to the toilet and I accused them of giving me ‘fake news’. I asked so much that in the end the physios helped me stand with support and I passed out due to postural hypotension (very low drop in blood pressure from being horizontal for so long). I was very frightened and did not ask again for a while.
Seven weeks after surgery, I arrived at Caroline House, the specialist neuro rehab unit at the Colman hospital in Norwich, transported on a stiff rickety stretcher.
Learning to walk has been even more difficult as I don’t get full sensation or feedback from the floor when I take steps. I also can’t always see the floor or my legs/feet properly due to some permanent sight loss and I need to look at my affected limb to make it move – my brain now needs that extra visual feedback to compensate.
I felt sad and incredibly frustrated when seeing how weak my steps were. I was annoyed at myself for no longer being able to do something that came so naturally before. I didn’t always believe progress was possible, but constant repetition and perseverance has been paying off and noticing my progress gives me a huge boost of motivation to continue this exhausting and seemingly endless process of recovery.
My version of ‘going out for a walk’ is now mostly being pushed along by someone in my wheelchair. Whilst I’m ‘down here’, they are ‘up there’, leaning over me and having a different experience. I’m not at eye level with them or the rest of the world.
Utilities aren’t designed for me. From the hand dryers even in so-called ‘accessible’ toilets, to signage and surfaces around shops, to the pin card machines and seating at tables in cafes. I doubt these are designed by or with wheelchair-users – the world now feels out of my reach. For a long time, I couldn’t get up to hug my family and friends.
I doubt these are designed by or with wheelchair-users – the world now feels out of my reach
I feel like I am constantly pleading with people to help me with the smallest of tasks, like picking up items I have accidentally dropped. It’s simple things like moving objects between rooms or getting into my garden, or not being able to access the upstairs of my house that cause me frustration.
I have given myself permission to be sad about the difficulties I now have.I give myself permission to be annoyed about well-meaning text messages from people telling me being ‘positive’ will mean I will recover quicker (as if that’s all I need to get better!). Whilst I know these are coming from a good place, in the early days I found it patronising as it trivialises the weight of my life-changing trauma.
Walking out of rehab
Despite being ‘full hoist’ as they call it (meaning having no independent way of mobilising or transferring) it was my goal to walk out of the hospital door upon discharge. That day came in early May 2024 – about five months into my stay. I made my way towards the hospital entrance to find the staff all lined up for my exit. I stood up from my wheelchair and steadied my balance with my quad stick.
I started walking towards the bell that is rung to signal a patient’s discharge. It chimed out loudly over the cheering and clapping of those on the ward
Guided by some of my key staff and with my husband by my side, I started walking towards the bell that is rung to signal a patient’s discharge. It chimed out loudly over the cheering and clapping of those on the ward, I carried on walking, past the reception desk and out into the sunshine. I can’t count how many times I’ve watched the video of my discharge walk, kindly filmed on my husband’s phone by my physiotherapist. It makes me swell with pride and has brought tears to the eyes of those I’ve shown it to.
To go out in nature and make art, my community occupational therapist has recently given me an armrest to put on my NHS chair when I’m out. I’ve been using this as a drawing surface.
The core of me has been reaffirmed. I always knew I was someone who was determined, but I would have never imagined I could have got through something like this
Since being in hospital, a new bridge has been built in my hometown. My goal is now to walk the length of it when I’m strong enough. The core of me has been reaffirmed. I always knew I was someone who was determined, but I would have never imagined I could have got through something like this.
Genevieve is currently working on a project called ‘Ambulatory Imaginations’, that incorporate her lived experience and will create inclusive and accessible ways of engaging in arts and nature in Norfolk/ Suffolk with others experiencing similar brain /spinal/ neuro/ mobility/ sight barriers.
You can read Genevieve’s previous Slow Ways stories and artworks here and here. We hope Genevieve will write for us again as she continues to recover.
Genevieve Rudd
Genevieve Rudd is an experienced community artist based in/from Great Yarmouth, on the Norfolk coast. She develops creative projects that encourage closer looking, and that ask about the places and people around us. These include environmental arts, working outdoors, walking and nurturing nature-connection through creativity. Genevieve’s participatory work with people often explores the intersection between arts, health & wellbeing, and climate & environment.
In her own arts practice, she considers themes of time, place and seasonality through slow photographic practices. This includes growing plants to use in her work, capturing seasonal moments and weather events, and creating artwork that can compost back to the earth. Genevieve is a qualified Wild Beach Leader and Founder of Under Open Sky, a not-for-profit organisation exploring our relationships to the changing coastal climate through multidisciplinary approaches, based in East Anglia.
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