Slow Ways
Maybe Terroir should adopt this as a slogan, as we have been rather slow-moving in picking up on the Slow Ways project. In case that goes for you, too, I’ll tell you what we know about it so far.
If you go to the project website https://beta.slowways.org/ you may be somewhat phased by the Home Page which hits you between the eyes with a nodal and very purple matrix which looks more like a protein network than an invitation to amble across Britain! Each node is a city, town or village and the aim is to connect them by creating a unique network of walking routes. Wheels are allowed, but only if they belong to a wheel chair or children’s buggy.
‘Using existing paths, ways, trails and roads, people can use Slow Ways routes to walk or wheel between neighbouring settlements, and combine them to create longer distance trips. It’s designed to make it easier for people to imagine, plan and go on walking journeys.’
As far as we can see, it is the brain child of Dan Raven-Ellison, self-styled ‘Guerrilla Geographer and Creative Explorer’. He is also keen on ‘wild cities’ and creating a London National Park. Neither of these concepts are new, of course, but if DR-E can raise the profile, speed things up, change attitudes – and find the funding – then we are all for it.
Raven-Ellison writes that, in February 2020 lockdown, a group of 70 people were mobilised to test the Slow Ways idea, followed by 700 to plot a first draft of the network. We assume this was a desk study, based on mapping provided by one of the project supporters, the Ordnance Survey (OS). By the winter of 2020, ‘80,000 people [had] registered to help walk and review routes’. That number continues to grow and, by May 2021, included Team Terroir.
Why did we join up? At first glance it seems like a tremendous idea: mobilising a huge army of volunteers to identify routes which will connect communities and encourage walking over driving, just as we were encouraged to do during Covid: roads were empty whereas green space and countryside honeypots were heaving. We desperately needed to encourage people to explore footpaths, spread the visitor impact more widely and enjoy it at the same time!
But Terroir wonders if there may be downsides. This is from the BBC, on the subject of the Slow Ways project (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54562137), last October:
“Would you know the best way to walk from Leeds to Manchester? From Tring to Milton Keynes, or Carlisle to Inverness? If not, then you're not alone.
We live in a time when our phones will show us the quickest route to almost anywhere - if we are driving, that is. Walking? Well, that's a different matter.”
As a point of accuracy, BBC, any decent mobile phone App will tell you how to walk from T to MK, but what it won’t show you is a pleasant route via footpaths and countryside, which is what Slow Ways is all about.
On the other hand, why would you want to walk from Tring to Milton Keynes (a 7 hour, 20 mile walk) when you can walk from Tring to a pretty part of the Chilterns? Or, if you want a long walk, what’s wrong with the 134 mile long, circular Chilterns Way? Wouldn’t an app or map which showed you the best walking route from Tring to the nearest bit of a Chilterns waymarked footpath, be more popular?
After a career in landscape, I am no longer surprised by the number of people who struggle to interpret maps. Most of us learn to read words and many read music, but how many of us are comfortable with plans and cartography? Will replacing an OS map with a purple Slow Way map make walking any more accessible? Those of us who love and already use maps can plot our own routes, whether from community to community, or to/though an attractive piece of countryside.
I hope I will be proved wrong and any comments from Slow Ways will be very welcome at the bottom of this blog. If no comment box is visible, click on ‘read more’, scroll down the blog again (sorry) and put me right.
Earlier this week, Terroir set out to walk our first Slow Way. It is called Redgod One, and links Godstone and Redhill, in Surrey. Both ends can easily be accessed by bus, and the Redhill end has a decent train service. We’re not born techies, however, and we found the website clunky and the route map download difficult, so we worked with a combination of mobile phone data and – guess what – a comforting paper copy of the relevant 1:25,000 Ordnance Survey Map.
We thought we were out for a general, Slow Way experience, but soon discovered that the project is still very much at the pioneering stage. By signing up for the Slow Ways website, you can take on a number of roles, including ‘review’, ‘verify’, ‘survey’ and ‘add a new route’. In retrospect, I think our five mile walk will trigger all these activities. We also now know that Redgod One’s theme is the Surrey sand extraction industry. Perhaps it should be renamed Redsand, or Greensand, or RedsandGod. Please see Terroir’s first ever blog if you want to know more about Surrey and sand.
We started in Godstone. In good times, Godstone is blessed with an extraordinary number of pubs and cafes, some interesting architecture, at least two ponds and a well-used village green. Even in bad times, it boasts public toilets, although so poorly lit that an in depth review of the facility is not possible. Our walk commenced by traversing the aforementioned village green. There followed Redgod One’s first and only encounter with a busy main road, which immediately threw up a route amendment: the footway on the northern side of the A25 offers a marginally improved experience, with a slightly safer road crossing, compared with the one suggested by the Slow Way route. Good: our morning is already providing some positive feedback. Oh, and somewhere on our right is our first sand quarry, hidden behind a strategic tree/shrub belt.
Redgod One - the Godstone end. Left: our personal starting point - bus stop, public conveniences and one of the pubs Centre: another pub! Right: village green and pond
Cricket has been played in Godstone since 1749 and is memorialised by this poignant sculpture: from one view (left) you see a cricketer, from another view (right) a first world war soldier.
Left: our Slow Way took us diagonally across the Green from the pond at one corner (out of shot to the right) to (Right): the A25, just as the road leaves the village and heads off westwards towards Redhill
From left to right: here is the southern side of the RedGod route along the A25; although it has a fine crop of Arum lilies, it is sigificantly less pleasant than the elevated northern foot way, which leads us to our escape route to rural byeways
After a bearable 250 m we are off the A road and enjoying a sandy footpath.
Left: the quarry is relatively unobtrusive, behind its boundary fencing while Right: at our next path junction, the sand wagons are substantial and rather obvious! At this point, Redgod One, takes us left, away from these juggernauts. But please read on!
Not long, though, to the first major shock of the day: Redgod One’s purple line ignores the public right of way, clearly shown on the OS map, and careers into inaccessible sand-quarry-land (below left). We skirt decorously round on the bridleway (below right), screened from quarries and a golf course by massive hedges both new and old. It’s like walking down an ornamental allée in an English garden.
Emerging from hedge-dom, we glimpse a sheep strewn restored quarry and pass into the world of Brewer Street – a hamlet of varied but interesting architecture, much now re-imagined as residential property, small business units and wedding venues. To our right is a sandy plain, as yet unexcavated, a scatter of farmsteads and some seriously big houses. Sandy Lane, Water Lane, Lake Farm, Place Farm offer insights into former features, wet and dry.
Through undulating farmland and substantial mansions we approach the M23, where an enormous underpass allows access for the likes of us, but also for the likes of combine harvesters, removal pantechnicons, quarry lorries and every other sort of large vehicle which a road engineer could possibly imagine.
A hundred metres later and we have found the edge of the known universe. All maps indicate a footpath cross roads, but we are stymied at a new T junction, with a healthy grain crop ahead of us and a suspiciously new finger post with no onward option. The flat land ahead of us is now a quarry margin and we must skirt round the field, cross a new quarry access road, and follow a new (although perfectly pleasant) path to meet Cycle Way 21, as it winds its way between new quarries, old quarries, landfilled quarries and restored quarries. It’s all much nicer than it sounds, with a popular inn, cricket ground, a country park with a sailing/fishing/wildlife lake - and many more farm buildings converted into residential use.
Left: a diversion with new quarry buldings just visible in the middle distance. Right: the new peripheral path, neatly machined into the field edge.
The new bits of infrastructure…
… are stitched to the old
Round one more corner and we are all on familiar territory as Redgod One lurches into Redhill via the Moors (please see blogs 1, 11 and 16 for details). No route changes are required here, although the landfill to the east of the path rises inexorably towards the sky.
So now ‘all’ that is left is to start working on our route review, verification, survey (with photographs) and ‘add a new route’ form. I can see why walking and map loving volunteers flock to do this sort of work. We’ll let you know how we get on.