Painstakingly, privately, in homes throughout Britain, revolutionaries have been at work. All through the lockdown year they have researched, planned and communicated online.
Soon their scheme will launch. Not a coup, but a benign and beautiful idea that aims to change the way we see and treat and use our country.
The Slow Ways project is apparently simple: By mapping all 200,000 miles of Britain’s public rights of way, participants hope to transform our perceptions of our local areas, the ways in which they link to others, and the way we travel between them. The man behind Slow Ways is Daniel Raven-Ellison, geographer and explorer.
‘Historically, footpaths exist because walking was how we got around before cars,’ he told me. ‘But we’ve almost forgotten them. Usually now we walk in circles or loops. But these paths connect every city, town and village in the UK.’
Over the past year, Raven-Ellison’s 700 volunteers have been using Ordnance Survey and Google maps to locate and chart the nation’s footpaths and bridleways: the much-used, the lost and the forgotten. Where possible, and often with overnight stays banned, they have walked and noted the paths.
The Slow Ways map, which goes live on April 23, has about 62,000 miles of paths marked out so far, but this is only the beginning. Raven-Ellison and his collaborators have much bigger ambitions.
Golden evening light spreads over the valley in Great Langdale in the Lake District, one of Britain’s most popular walking routes
‘We should all be able to walk enjoyably, safely and easily between villages,’ he says. ‘At the moment we tend to use our cars to go to the pub or to buy a loaf of bread.’ For our wellbeing and for the sake of the environment, he points out, we could and should do more of these journeys on foot.
‘The next stage is to get as many people as possible to walk, test, record and review these routes. So some people may want to avoid cows, for example, or they may have mobility issues so they want to avoid stiles, or they may want to do a long-distance route and stay in hotels in a certain price bracket.’
The Slow Ways website aims to provide all this information. Refreshingly, this is not a commercial project. ‘It’s all free,’ Raven-Ellison says. ‘We got funding from Sport England and the National Lottery.’
The idea is to use Slow Ways to plan your route, then load it into an app such as Map My Walk or Strava. If you wanted to go far, it would be invaluable.
‘Using our journey planner, in five minutes you can plot your route, and choose how hard, how cheap or expensive, how easy or physically challenging you want it to be,’ says Raven-Ellison.
On a day of cold wind, Arctic-blue skies and pale blinks of sun, I set out to test the Slow Ways contention that we really need this map, and to see what benefits and pleasures a village-to-village walk might bring.
We wanted to walk the oldest ways. The town where I live, Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire, was a tangled, rocky swamp until the 14th century (the name means briar or wild rose), so the most ancient trails go across the moors or along the contours at the height a crow flies, just below the valleys’ skylines. In a rude easterly wind, the kind that seems to go through you rather than around you, we fancied a sheltered stroll rather than a Yorkshire wuthering.
While a journey to Todmorden from Hebden would normally be a bore — the road is not attractive — setting out to stroll it along paths I have never taken feels hopeful and gently exciting.
Up the hill behind the railway line we go, along the lanes to the first footpath, and the feeling of setting out into the day is invigorating. Spring has come late to the Pennines. Daffodils glow gold in the cold air. Silky pussy willow buds unfurl slowly and defiantly.
You can see the indentations of old tracks, like the skeletons of time, and the ways where people used to walk, many now blocked by briars or fenced off with wires and ‘Private — No Entry’ signs.
The Slow Ways project is apparently simple: By mapping all 200,000 miles of Britain’s public rights of way, participants hope to transform our perceptions of our local areas, the ways in which they link to others, and the way we travel between them
As a farmer’s son, I sympathise with landowners who do not want strangers traipsing across their property. But when I put this tension to Raven-Ellison, his response is surprising.
‘Some of the paths were laid down by the Romans 2,000 years ago, and some by our ancestors 200 years ago. But in the past two decades our landscape has changed enormously. Cities and towns have spread. What new paths might we need? What paths will our descendants need in 200 years’ time?
‘Suppose you said to a landowner, ‘If you opened a permissive path across your field, children would be able to walk safely to school, rather than along an A-road,’ they might well agree to do it.’
This seems a sensible and inspiring way of looking at how landowners and walkers might work together. As we headed west across the woods and fields, the gifts of the old ways became obvious.
Here was a new prospect of Hebden, its interlocking ranks of slate roofs a charming blue, enfolded in the crook of the valley’s arm and surrounded by trees purpling with their new tide of buds.
Here a cluster of beehives, and there a string of Tibetan prayer flags fluttering over a rock outcrop, a natural look-out point with views of the valley and the moors.
I thought of the late travel writer Bruce Chatwin’s line: ‘When people start talking of man’s inhumanity to man it means they haven’t actually walked far enough.’
Walking does not erase the cares and agonies of the world, but it does put an easeful perspective on them. Encountered on foot, humans seem more good than ill. My friend and I talked as we crossed rough meadows and coiled through woods, the bare tree trunks starkly beautiful. A stream rushed, buoyant, between rocks ablaze with bright green moss.
After more than an hour of walking, the path wound determinedly down to the canal. We had put in plenty of effort, going up and down, and travelled almost no distance from Hebden. I apologised to my friend. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she laughed, ‘my knees are fine so far.’
We decided to go the rest of the way along the Rochdale canal. Without a Slow Ways map we could not tell where the best alternative route might run. This will change on April 23, when the map is published online, on Shakespeare’s birthday. In his play The Two Gentlemen Of Verona, he captures the mood of this sweet turning of the year, as one character describes:
‘The uncertain glory of an April day
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun
And by and by a cloud takes all away.’
And so to Todmorden, along a tow path dating from 1800. Community gardens, narrowboats, bursts of blossom and encounters with Canada geese made it a delightful expedition.
‘I have no idea what time it is,’ my friend said, suddenly, as we reached the outskirts. ‘Isn’t it lovely not to know?’
To be freed from clocks, screens and any rush rebalances the body and spirit. When we moved only as fast as our feet could carry us, days, time and the span of life must have felt very different. Where the canal met the town a sign said: ‘If things return to ‘normal’, we haven’t learnt our lessons.’
Amen to that. Here’s hoping Slow Ways is part of new, gentle mode of travelling and understanding our world. It is the best sort of revolution.
- Visit slowways.uk to get involved.
