Volunteers have mapped 10,000 walking routes across Great Britain in an attempt to make rural walking more accessible.
The routes provide accessible and scenic walks for disabled people, parents with children, and older people, according to Slow Ways, the campaign group behind the project.
The group has been researching and mapping these walking routes since 2020, and has now made them available on a dedicated website and app.
Daniel Raven-Ellison, the chief executive and founder of Slow Ways, said: “For millions of people, these routes give the psychological security and confidence that they would not have had otherwise. They do not want to take the risk of not knowing whether a route is right for them, or if it is something they will enjoy.”
The Slow Ways app gives users 112,000 miles of walks to choose from. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian
The new app will include 7,699 routes in England, 1,510 in Wales, and 854 in Scotland, giving users 112,000 miles of walks to choose from.
Raven-Ellison, who was previously a geography teacher, said popular apps such as Google Maps and Apple Maps “do not give information on why the route is good or what it will look like”.
By contrast, Slow Ways “can say if it is wheelchair accessible, whether there will be animals along the route, and if it will keep your shoes white and clean”.
Daniel Raven-Ellison, right, verifying a route between Congleton and Macclesfield. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian
He said the initiative was an act of citizen geography and “entirely democratic”. Volunteers across the country collected data on the quality of routes and made suggestions for how they could be made more accessible, which a group of panellists then reviewed.
Raven-Ellison said a big problem facing Britain’s walking networks was “that there is too much neglect and overgrowth, which then makes the routes even more inaccessible”.
He encouraged people to walk along the routes for enjoyment, which would indirectly help maintain the environment.
“Usually, an underused route becomes not properly looked after because people feel disconnected from it. When people more frequently use these routes and get a closer connection to the nature around it, then they will be more considerate about looking after it,” he said.
