A message from Dan Raven-Ellison who devised and organised Sloways

The initial aim was to have a nationwide walking network of routes and this has been achieved.

The aim now is to verify these routes.

You can help by going on a walk. Simply sign up, then:

choose a Slow Ways route

walk, or wheel it

review it

Walking and reviewing Slow Ways routes helps with a vital process of verifying them - receiving confirmation in at least three reviews. The more people who review a route the better.

You can also:

Try out the Slow Ways Journey Planner - Use a Journey Planner to combine multiple Slow Ways routes to plan longer journeys. Try it out and share the journeys you plan using the hashtag #SlowWays.

Share your Slow Ways journeys - We’d love to know about Slow Ways journeys. Please use the hashtag #SlowWays on social media and tag us on Instagram and Twitter using @SlowWaysUK.

Share information about your town - Nearly 2,500 towns, cities and villages have their own place pages like this one for Inverness. We want to populate these pages with information about basic facilities close to where Slow Ways routes start. Can you help by filling in a short survey about your town or city? Login to the website, go to the home page and browse for your town or city. Click on it under 'Places' and follow the link under 'Facilities'.

Submit a survey or share a route - Want to do more? You can help by surveying routes or sharing alternative routes. Details are in the “How to...” section of the website.

Make suggestions and ask questions - Visit our Help Centre and join a Slow Ways online community forum to ask for help. We’re a small core team - the more the forum is used the better. There’s a link at the bottom of every page and it’s accessible here. You will need a separate login for this.

Join our webinars - There are three webinars next week: an introduction to Slow Ways, how to use the website and how to survey a route. Register here. All of the webinars will be posted on a Slow Ways YouTube channel for those who can’t make it.

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of the volunteers, contributors and partners who have helped to get Slow Ways to this point. We would not have 7,000 routes and a new website if it was not for the hope, creativity, determination, goodwill and generosity of lots of people. We are sure that spirit will live on as the initiative grows.

Thank you too to our funders - Sport England & The National Lottery, Paths for All, The Pilgrim Trust and Kestrelman Trust - who have made the website and the resources around it possible.

Finally

The Slow Ways Team is a small one and we’re sending this message to a very large number of people. It may take us longer to reply to emails than we’d like, but we will read everything and respond where appropriate.

We hope you enjoy being part of the opening days, weeks and months of Slow Ways - and helping establish it as a nationwide network of trusted walking routes.

We can’t wait to get out to enjoy walking them ourselves too.

Many thanks,

Dan