Dan Barron, our Community Lead, shares a report on this summer’s National Parks Trail Challenge!
At the beginning of the summer, we embarked on an incredible mission: to collectively walk the entirety of the huge Slow Ways National Parks Trail.
This trail is over 4,000 km long and snakes its way from Inverness to Plymouth via every one of Britain’s fifteen official National Parks, as well as London, our National Park City.
Thank you so much to everyone who took part. We’re incredibly grateful for all your contributions. We know some of you faced tough challenges on difficult and unrewarding paths – all so that others don’t have to. You are all champions!
You can read more about the concept in this article we wrote for Campaign for National Parks.
So, how did we get on?
In total, we collectively spent at least 430 hours on the footpaths, pavements, and verges of Britain during this challenge. That’s 17.9 days on the move — enough time to sail across the Atlantic or drive from London to Cape Town without stopping!
We had 185 people sign up to take part across the whole of Britain, with the most northerly section completed in the Cairngorms and the most southerly being the final route of the trail down in Plymouth.
A special shout-out goes to the 22 Dartmoor Youth Rangers, all aged between 12 and 17, who made a great effort by walking and reviewing two routes between Yelverton and Princetown.
The longest unbroken stretch of the trail completed during the challenge was 185 km in the North West, from Keswick via the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales to Pateley Bridge. This was shortly followed by the 176 km section across the Midlands between Stratford-upon-Avon and Wisbech.
During the challenge:
- 164 of the 277 routes in the trail were walked (59%)
- 2,153 of 4,039 km were walked (53%)
This means that our all-time stats for the trail now look like this:
- 85% of routes reviewed
- 35% of routes surveyed
- 53% of routes verified
- 3,246 km of 4,039 km reviewed
What’s Next?
We’d love to get the whole trail reviewed and verified. While this summer’s challenge is over, the work to create the trail is far from finished.
We will continue to improve the National Parks Trail based on your feedback.
Do you have any suggestions for how to make it better? You can tell us by filling in this short form, and we’ll collate the suggestions into a new version of the trail.
Want to join the discussion? Come and join us on Discord.
And maybe you are even tempted to become the first person or people to walk a version of the whole thing? If so, we’d love to hear about your plans.
