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Why walk? A video from NHS Choices and Walk England
It's Walk to Work week!
Living Streets' Walk to Work Week is currently taking place across the UK, from 27 April to 1 May.
It's all about raising awareness of the benefits of walking and encouraging the nation to fit more of it into their everyday lives.
Go on, persuade your colleagues to check out their route to work on walkit.com. While most people won't be able to walk the whole way, perhaps they could cut out a few stops on the tube, metro, subway, tram or bus.
They may end up being happier, healthier, wealthier, and more beautiful people. And if you've got to sit with them all day, surely that's no bad thing!
You can log on or create your Walk to Work Week profile here.
Some recent feedback from our users
We hope you'll forgive us for copying below some feedback we've received over the past few days.
People do send in some pretty nice stuff, and that's very gratifying for us. We're also a little surprised that people bother. While we encourage feedback, we expected complaints to dominate.
OK, we've cherry-picked some of the best below – we get our quota of 'challenging' ones too. But that's good for us, because it keeps us on our toes. We're just sorry we can't act on all of them straight away.
Have a read and see if you agree – or give us a dose of reality by reminding us where we're getting it all wrong!
————————————————————————————————————————-“This is the best idea and website anyone who lives in a big city and likes walking could come across. I use it regularly and mention it to friends and acquaintances that ask me how to get places and how long it takes. The timing given is very accurate in my dilated experience too. Unfortunately I'm moving to NY soon and it'd be great to find a similar site for that city. Keep it up! Cheers!”
Jose, April 17
“I think this is a great website, I like the variation of walking times which are really accurate and the choice of routes. I went onto the TFL website and it would take me 20mins on the tube, but after calculating my route on Walk It I saw it would take only 22mins to walk. I had no idea that my destination was so easy to reach – I had assumed as it took 20mins on the tube it would take me about an hour to walk until I found your website. It is saving me money and I am getting fit.”
Carla, April 17“I've been training on my own in London for the Breast cancer Moonwalk. I would have never been able to vary my walks and fit the training in around my lifestyle without the aid of Walk it! My friends who are training in rural Northamptonshire which is not covered have been very jealous.”
Emma, April 17
“I was looking at the details for Portobello Baths and saw the link. I walk almost everywhere in Edinburgh – always have. Finally I can work out how much I walk in a day. Made my day. Thanks.”
Sean, April 16“This is a fantastic website! I've found so many quicker routes, it's great to know the distance I'm walking and estimating calories burnt is a real incentiviser. Thanks so much and keep up the good work.”
Vicki, April 16
“Spotted your Ad on at a bus stop whilst walking and decided to check out the website. Surprisingly it was spotted during a discussion about how much walking I should be doing for a starter. Therefore, I won the argument and continued walking with a smile. I am encouraged to walk more for health, fitness and to enjoy the environment more. Also you notice attractions which you past when driving or travelling on the Bus.”
M Lewis, April 16“Great I love this site, it has freed me from the underground and allowed me to know where I am. Many thanks”
Geoff, April 15
“I love walkit.com and have been using it a lot recently to plan different routes for walking to and from work. It's been so helpful as walking to work is something I've always wanted to do but was scared of not 'knowing the way'. I only walk half of the way for now which is 45 mins and am aiming to build up to the full 1.5 hr walk each way in the summer.”
Helen, April 15
London Waterloo - the UK's most shameful station for pedestrians?
Take a look at this:
You're looking at one of the main pedestrian entrances/exits of the UK's busiest train station – there were just over 100 million entries and exits in 2007/08 (next up was London Victoria with a mere 77 million).
Of course a large proportion of those people were going straight from a tube to a train (and vice versa), and were not venturing outside on foot. Who could blame them?
Especially when they'd also be greeted by this:
And this:
And this forest of signs:
And this Tracey Emin piece:
As a commuter, visitor, tourist or local resident, how's this meant to make you feel? Loved? Welcome? Proud?
It shows a scandalous disregard (contempt?) for people and their surrounding environment. It would never be tolerated inside the station, but because it's a few metres outside the 'front door', a wild west of irresponsibility seems to kick in.
So who's to blame? Network Rail? South West Trains? Lambeth Council? Boris and the GLA? You can hear the 'not us, gov' responses ricocheting around.
Ultimately, surely it's in all their interests to sort this out?
The irony is that just a stone's throw away, across the Waterloo Road, there's a lesson in how to do this stuff right:
High quality paving, high quality seating, trees, decluttered, good lines of sight. It shows some respect to those travelling on foot. And in a station context, just look at what great results they've achieved in Sheffield.
Who's going to sort this one out? While there are grand plans to transform this area into Waterloo City Square, “to deliver significant improvements over the next 5 years”, aren't people going in and out of Waterloo station deserving of action a little quicker than that?
Night walk across Greater Manchester - 18/19 April
Dan at Urban Earth has been in touch about the latest in their 'urban adventures through the Earth's largest cities'.
See our post from December 9 to see their great films of walks across London and Bristol.
They're now taking a night walk across Manchester on April 18/19 – you can sign up here.
It's 34km, but there are 18km and 10km options too.
