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dgreiller | 11 Mar 09, 11.18AM


Kate Ashbrook - Martin Doughty obituary


Kate Ashbrook - Martin Doughty obituary

Martin Doughty, chairman of Natural England who died on 4 March, was proud to have been born just as the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 was passed. He was proud too that his father joined the Kinder Trespass in 1932.

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dgreiller | 10 Mar 09, 15.21PM


Tom Franklin - Get Walking Day


Tom Franklin - Get Walking Day

I’ve just heard that we’ve now got more than 60 walks lined up for this year’s Get Walking Day. This is the second time we’ve run the event – the idea is to always hold it on 30th May (which is 30/5, and so fits in with the minimum amount of exercise that experts recommend – 30 minutes, 5 times a week).

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admin | 20 Feb 09, 0.08AM


Dominic Bates – editor of walk magazine


Dominic Bates – editor of walk magazine

Welcome to the new-look walk website! If this is your first visit to our digital shores, you’ve just discovered the online version of Britain’s biggest walking magazine – read by over 135,000 passionate walkers and Ramblers members up and down the country.

We’ve been working really hard to make oodles of improvements to the magazine, and even more to the website. Not only can you find all the content from walk issues past and present here, but there’s also loads more features, news and reviews from the world of walking updated every week to keep you going until the next magazine comes rolling off the press.

But only you – the readers – can really judge whether any of these changes are any good. So let us know what you think by posting a comment under this blog. Which bit of the new mag do you like best? Have we got the balance right between leisure-focused walking articles and topical, campaigning features? What would you like to see more or less of in the next edition? Have you found any glitches on the new website? We can’t promise to accommodate every suggestion straight away, but all of your comments will help us plan the future of the mag and the website.

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admin | 20 Feb 09, 0.06AM


Tom Franklin, Ramblers Chief Executive


Tom Franklin, Ramblers Chief Executive

Imagine you’re putting on a party. You spend a fortune on printing lovely invitations, and send them out to all your friends. But when they arrive, you’ve forgotten to organise any drinks or food. How embarrassing!

The Government’s latest drive to encourage us all to get fit risks making this same mistake. We’ve all seen the splurge of advertising on television and in newspapers for the ‘Change 4 Life’ campaign since the new year. If these ads are the invitations to encourage people to get fit, the Government’s forgotten to provide anything for those who respond to the invitations.

Don’t get me wrong – I think it is good that the Government is prepared to spend money on encouraging people to eat well and get fit. Advertising can be effective. After all, enough money is spent successfully advertising products that make us less healthy. We’ve seen the power of advertising to change public attitudes over issues like drink driving (where, believe it or not, before advertising started in the 1970s more than half of the public thought it was unfair to ask people not to drink and drive if they were going out for a sociable evening).

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admin | 19 Feb 09, 0.14AM


Will Self - In praise of industrial estates


Will Self - In praise of industrial estates

Will Self balks at the crowded and ‘pre-packaged’ outdoors of Britain’s beauty spots, recommending the solitude of an ‘unlovely’ urban walk instead

A couple of years ago, the writer Nick Royle and I decided that we would undertake the Three Peaks Challenge. We’d get another rambling writer to join us, raise sponsorship and give the proceeds to charity. However, it transpired that there were grave environmental concerns about the peaks. The sheer numbers of sponsored walkers clambering up Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon were leading to catastrophic erosion, denudation of flora, scaring off of fauna – not to mention the large quantities of plastic water bottles that were left behind by these charitable folk.

In truth, I’ve never considered doing a sponsored walk since my age reached double digits, but I liked the idea of three writers/three peaks. I suppose it was naïve of me not to have realised the extent to which these eminences would’ve become a magnet for people who would never normally go walking. After all, I’ve been a walker all my life and I’ve noticed that the words ‘area of outstanding natural beauty’ attract Gore-tex the way sugar does wasps.

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admin | 18 Feb 09, 19.44PM


Christopher Somerville’s A-Z of walking


Christopher Somerville’s A-Z of walking

A is for Anger – that healthy and yet thoroughly scary emotion. At least, we are told it is healthy. Let off steam at your workmates, exhorts the industrial psychologist. Go on, it’s good to clear the air. Scream and shout at your partner, advises the relationship counsellor. No holds barred if you really love each other, and the sex will be great when you make up. Howl and rant at farmers who obstruct footpaths, says… Hold on – says who? Only a precipitate fool, I have just come to realise.

The path I was following was overgrown, for sure. In fact the starve-acre Gloucestershire farm it crossed could not have looked more neglected. Everywhere there were signs of hardship and hopelessness – thistly fields, limping sheep, collapsing sheds. If times are tough in the mainstream banks and high streets, they are tougher still out in the agricultural backwaters. But still… this farmer obviously hated walkers. Why else would he have let his hedge smother the gap where the stile should have been? And here he came, a grim-looking chap with a sour expression.

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