Up for an adventure with purpose? Join our next National Slow Ways Swarm!

Slow Ways is honoured to have a bunch of supervolunteers – solo walkers who are putting enormous time and energy into reviewing routes. They meet up for a walk every so often so I joined them in the Midlands, on the overgrown Longbridge to Halesowen route

To celebrate his century of Slow Ways routes, I reached out to David with some questions. I wanted to find out what makes him tick, what he's planning next and any tips he has for people who'd like to follow in his footsteps.

My name is Michael Tormey. I’m originally from the United States, but I’ve spent the past year studying for an MSc in Transportation Planning and Engineering at the University of Southampton. For my Masters dissertation, I’ve been looking into how and where we can focus efforts to continue improving the Slow Ways network of walking routes. Read all about my analysis here.

In this article we take to Slow Way Woodwool with David Matthews who is walking 6000 miles to visit every Samaritans in England, Scotland and Wales.

6 films of 1-2 minutes’ duration have been created by 2 film-makers to show people in different settings, enjoying walking and making use of Slow Ways for a variety of reasons.

Mahroof joined the initial Slow Ways ‘hack day’ in January 2020 to help form its early thinking and start the process of creating a network of walking routes. He went for a walk with friend Belal and film maker Nico Hambleton to explore the idea of Slow Ways. It made sense to walk one of the Slow Ways routes, from Bishop’s Castle to Minsterley, taking in tea shops, Shropshire Hills tracks and trig points along the way. Here’s some of what they spoke about. And here’s the short film, part of a suite of ‘Slow Ways Voices’ films.