At our Full Council meeting on 30th November 2020, the Parish Council agreed its support for the Slow Ways initiative and undertook to make local residents aware of its work.

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.

Further information, including how to get involved in the work, can be found on the Slow Ways website.

Using existing paths, ways, trails and roads, people can use Slow Ways routes to walk or wheel between neighbouring settlements, and combine them to create longer distance trips. It's designed to make it easier for people to imagine, plan and go on walking journeys.

There are currently over 8,500 Slow Ways stretching for over 120,000km. This network of routes was created by 700 volunteers during the Spring 2020 lockdown, creating a unique Slow Ways map in the process.

Cheltenham currently has 7 Slow Ways mapped which link to the following places:

Bishop's Cleeve, Brockworth, Colesbourne, Innsworth, Northleach, Tewkesbury, Winchcombe

They've had some big wins recently but they need more help from local walkers.

Half of the network has been checked by at least one person and 12% of routes are verified! As a result it's now possible to walk between Sheffield, Nottingham, Birmingham, Worcester and Ledbury entirely on verified routes. You can walk verified routes between Brighton to Cardiff too.

Once every town, city and village in the network have 100% checked their local Slow Ways they'll have jointly created the first verified network - which will be infrastructure for enjoyment, active travel, health, tackling the climate crisis, connecting communities and so much more.

The team at Slow Ways would love more people to walk the Cheltenham routes to verify them!

If you think you could assemble a team of people to walk all of Cheltenham's Slow Ways in February and March, check out this article on the Slow Ways website.