A project mapping Bristol’s walking routes calls on volunteers to road-test them

An ambitious grassroots project is aiming to inspire people to discover Bristol’s outdoors in an entirely new way.

Dreamt up by geographer and explorer Dan Raven-Ellison during the first lockdown of 2020, Slow Ways calls on walkers to test out a national network of walking trails. These include seven routes stretching from the centre of Bristol outwards.

Raven-Ellison said: “Even though our islands are rich with paths, they’ve not been pulled together into a single network that makes it easy for people to see how they can get between places on foot.”

The vision of Slow Ways is to connect the UK’s towns, cities and villages using existing off-road paths.

Spanning from the core of Bristol, the website maps routes to Winford, Nails, Portishead, Filton, Hambrook, Wick and Keynsham.

Walking Slow Ways’ seven routes from Bristol helps with the vital process of verifying them – image courtesy of Slow Ways

Key to the Slow Ways network is its inclusion of a diverse range of users. Using indicators such as path surface and route access grade, people can assess a route’s suitability for those in wheelchairs, pushing prams or wanting to avoid dark and enclosed paths for safety reasons.

A cohort of 700 volunteers have already plotted 7000 routes across the country.

However, Raven-Ellison says the project has only just begun and is now calling on walkers to give feedback on the Slow Ways.

The project maps seven routes from the middle of Bristol, encouraging users to rediscover urban and rural walkways – photo courtesy of David Mathias

Briham one is one route charted between Bristol and Hambrook in South Gloucestershire.

One reviewer on the Slow Ways website describes the route as “easily navigable and mostly off-road, using two green corridors – the Bristol to Bath railway path and the lovely wooded valley of the River Frome, with a short road-based crossover between the two half way along”.

They said: “It’s an excellent way into or out of Bristol and you wouldn’t know you were in a city for much of it.”

Bristol filmmaker David Mathias recently produced a film called The Forgiving Path, inspired by the Slow Ways project with a focus on local Bristol stories.

The documentary short celebrates Bristol’s inner-city walks by following the story of three people on their walking journeys in the Bristol area.

Featured in Mathias’ film is Sophie Brown, founder of women’s walking group Steppin Sistas which was set up to improve the wellbeing of women of colour by encouraging them to venture into rural spaces.

Explaining the meaning behind the project, Raven-Ellison said: “Slow Ways will bring people joy, but they have a deeper purpose too. We need solutions to the economic, health, ecological and climate crises.

“Walking between places can not only improve our health, wellbeing, environment and finances on a personal level, it can improve them on a societal level too.”

He added: “Life has slowed down in lockdown. Now people are reconnecting with their surroundings and discovering new things about the country. I hope Slow Ways will help them to continue to do this.”

Main photo by David Mathias

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