Get your community properly connected to the Slow Ways national walking network

We are delighted to invite your council to contribute to the creation of Slow Ways - an ambitious crowd-sourced, community-verified national walking network that connects all of Britain’s towns, cities and national parks.

Boosting walking and wheeling remains a top priority for all councils. Slow Ways is a great resource to help you achieve that goal.

Supported by the National Lottery Community Fund, our mission is to make it easier for people to walk and wheel between places. Having a network of recommended and trusted routes is key to unlocking this - and you have the power to help.

Contributing to the Slow Ways walking network will help your council and community across multiple agendas including:

• Health and wellbeing
• Connecting people and communities
• The Climate Emergency
• Active Travel
• Tourism, Leisure, Culture, Heritage
• Accessing Nature
• Planning
• Levelling Up
• Cost of Living
• Happiness and joy

Citizens from across the country have already drafted 9,000 routes that stretch for over 130,000km (80,000 miles).

Now these routes need checking on the ground to make sure they are good enough for people to follow. Councils are uniquely positioned to help with that challenge.

So far 1 in 5 Slow Ways have been checked and verified by people across the country. This is an incredible collective achievement.

We now need your help to scale-up our national effort and verify the whole the network. Each route requires at least three positive reviews and a survey for it to become part of the Slow Ways trusted network.

The aim is for every place in the network to be 100% checked. Once that’s happened we’ll have jointly created a national network that everyone can use. Every place in the network has a place page like Kimberley does, why not search for a local town here to see how it’s getting on?

Learn more - Download our toolkit to discover how and why to help.

Walk the walk - Choose a suitable route from the Slow Ways website or iPhone app, walk it and then leave a review. You can do this on your own or better still, organise a day for the wider community or Parish to walk all of the Slow Ways in your area.

Share this message- Do you know people or groups in your council or community who would like to get involved? Please share this opportunity by forwarding this message and posting it online and in newsletters.

Stay in the loop - Would you like to be kept up to date with the progress of Slow Ways? Sign up for the Friends of Slow Ways newsletter.

Councils have extraordinary collective potential to come together to make a big difference to this incredible national effort.

Please accept this invitation to join in. We’d love for you to be part of it.

To find out more information please visit the Slow Ways website.