Getting started with Slow Ways

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A beginners’ step-by-step guide

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.

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
  • You can find us on social media at Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Instagram – we are @SlowWaysUK
  • Join our Slow Ways Discord forum where you will find lots of people poised to help, regional priority route lists, and lots more
  • You can also contact us on [email protected]

Download the Get Started guide

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!

Join the Big Slow Ways Challenge 2024

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.

Welcome on board, and happy walking!

Slow Ways
Slow Ways is an initiative to create a national network of walking routes connecting all of Great Britain’s towns and cities as well as thousands of villages. It’s designed to make it easier for people to imagine, plan and go on walking journeys, walking further and for more purposes.