Who’s behind the Slow Ways initiative?

Slow Ways was started by Dan Raven-Ellison. Dan’s done lots of walking in the UK and began wondering why our incredible footpath infrastructure, heritage and culture is not better organised and easier to navigate.

In February 2020 Dan invited anyone who likes maps and walking to attend a Slow Ways hackday at GeoVation, Ordnance Survey’s innovation centre in central London. The day was full of learning, energy and success. As a result, the idea of Slow Ways started to grow.

Dan had planned to organise ten further hack events across Wales, Scotland and England to complete a first draft of the Slow Ways network. Unfortunately Covid-19 put the brakes on that.

A call was put out for anyone to attend online training (by Zoom of course) to help create the network and 700 people stepped forward. As a result of their enthusiasm, creativity, determination and energy, roughly a year’s worth of time was invested in the project in a single month. The result was a first initial draft of the Slow Ways network. 

The Slow Ways initiative would not exist if it was not for the positivity and generosity of the people who have volunteered so far. Thank you!

We now need to recruit thousands of people from across Great Britain to help walk, test, verify, record, improve and enjoy the Slow Ways walking routes. To do that we’re building a website to host information on all of the routes and doing lots of work to make sure the project is a success. 

To help with all of that, we’ve recently set up Slow Ways CIC. This is a not-for-profit and asset locked Community Interest Company that is limited by guarantee. It’s purpose is to help make the Slow Ways initiative a success and as a result, get more people walking more of the time.

The initiative has been supported by friends at OnePointFive, Urban Good, Ordnance Survey, OS Maps and ESRI and Rob Bushby Consulting.

Slow Ways has had critical funding from Sport England & The National Lottery, Paths for All, The Pilgrim Trust and Kestrelman Trust. 

Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far.