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
