Get a giant Slow Ways walking map of Great Britain

Missed this crowdfunding campaign but want a map? Click here to order from Urban Good. Thank you!

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Slow Ways is a grassroots initiative to create a national network of walking routes that connect all of Great Britain's towns and cities as well as thousands of villages. This giant network is being co-created and drawn by thousands of volunteers.

We are crowdfunding to publish our first big maps of the network. Want a copy and up for helping?

We want to make it easier for people to imagine, plan and enjoy walking journeys - and we'd love your help to do that.

The maps will be big, bold, beautiful and designed to inspire and support people imagine, plan and share journeys.

The map will be great for:

• imagining
• planning journeys
• drawing on
• using as a companion to the website
• marking Slow Ways you plan to walk
• recording routes you have walked
• learning about active travel in schools
• making walls look fantastic!

We want to reach as many people as we can. 

By backing the map you will be supporting Slow Ways too, helping to establish Slow Ways in how people think about travel in Great Britain.

Just by getting yourself a map and sharing it with others you'll be supporting our mission. We also want to get maps to teachers, schools, colleges, key politicians, decision makers and influencers across the country too. By backing this campaign you'll be helping us do that.

Teacher or lecturer? Scroll down to request a free pair of maps for your school.

About Slow Ways

Slow Ways is an initiative to create a network of walking routes that connect all of Great Britain's towns and cities as well as thousands of villages and every national park. People can use the routes to walk between neighbouring places or combine routes to travel over longer distances.

Slow Ways was kick-started during the first lockdown with hundreds of volunteers suggesting thousands of routes. There are now over 8,000 routes in the network that cover over 120,000km. Using the Slow Ways website, people are now walking the routes to make sure they are good enough to be in the network.

Enough work has now been done to publish our first printed map of the network at a scale that is perfect for imagining, planning and recording journeys. 

Thank you to everyone who's contributed to Slow Ways and helped to get the initiative to this point. This map is a major milestone.

About the map

The Slow Ways Map of Great Britain has been collaboratively created with contributions from hundreds of volunteers. 

The map is being designed by our friends at Urban Good CIC, a social enterprise that specialises in creating and publishing beautiful maps.

Split across a pair of Northern and Southern maps, each sheet is 126cm x 95cm. The two maps overlap, with the Northern map orientated in portrait and the Southern in landscape.

Orkney and the Shetland are designed to be cut out of the Northern map, so they can be placed in the correct scale and location.

On the front of each sheet is a graphic map of either Northern or Southern Great Britain, including Slow Ways route lines that can be coloured in. 

On the rear of each sheet is a beautiful bonus relief map of the whole of Great Britain, along with a set of Slow Ways routes. 

The maps you see on this page are our latest designs. The final design you receive may be slightly different in colour or detail.

Each route line on the map not only recommends a way to get from one place to another, but time spent by volunteers drawing and checking routes. The map reflects thousands of hours of creativity, generosity and adventure by volunteers across Great Britain.

What's the true value of the map?

We are making these maps available at £5 each. These maps are not worth £5. They are worth much more than that. Big, bold, beautiful, artistic and great for planning, we could have decided on a much higher price.

The thing is, we're not really selling maps. We're sharing an idea, inspiration, hope, possibilities and ways.

We want to inspire and support more people to walk and wheel more often, further and for more purposes. 

Walking and wheeling Slow Ways can benefit people in numerous ways, including:

• more joy
• improved mental and physical health
• connecting and strengthening communities
• space to reflect
• time to nurture relationships with people, nature and places
• imagining where new and better paths would help
• nurturing a culture of walking further for more purposes
• zero carbon travel
• low cost travel
• creating memory, story and culture
• inspiring people to travel in new ways and visit different places
• helping to create, shape and strengthen the network for other people

The cost of making the maps more expensive may be fewer people experiencing these benefits. For their size and design, they are worth more than £5, but for this initiative, the real value is getting the maps into hands and inspiring new journeys.

English, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic

We are going to produce both the Northern and Southern maps in English. These maps will be printed and distributed this summer.

Over the summer we're going to be creating a Welsh version of the Southern Map and a Scottish Gaelic version of the Northern Map. We'll be sending these out during the Autumn of this year.

We've designed the maps so Orkney and Shetland can be cut out and place in their correct locations.

About this crowdfunding campaign

Slow Ways CIC is supported by the National Lottery Community Fund. We are collaborating with Urban Good CIC as part of the initiative and so all our design costs are already covered.

Your contribution to the crowdfunder will help us to promote, print and distribute the maps. 

We want young people across Great Britain to learn about Slow Ways. At their request, we want to get sets of maps to teachers, lecturers, schools, colleges and universities. You can help by 

Across Great Britain there are lots of politicians, decision makers and influencers who, if they knew about Slow Ways, could help to bring the initiative to life. Ideally they will be supporting this crowdfunding campaign, but if not, we'd like to inspire them to support Slow Ways with a map.

We'll be contacting these people in a systematics and strategic way. We will only ever send maps to targeted people who have requested the maps.

We want all of the maps to be kept, enjoyed and valued.

Free maps for schools, colleges and universities

The maps are a powerful educational resource.  With your support, we are going to send pairs of maps to schools across the UK.

Teachers will be able to use them both in lessons and displays.

Support this effort by selecting the "Give maps to schools" reward and let's see how many schools we can reach!?

If you are a teacher, lecturer or member of a school's team you can register for a free pair of maps here. 

We'll post maps to as many registered schools as we can. We'll do this in a fair and randomised way, but very much hope we will be able to send maps to  all schools that request them. We'll likely limit deliveries to one free set per UK school, college or university.

The rewards!

Here's what you can get by supporting this crowdfunding campaign.

• Northern Map - The Northern Map in English or Scottish Gaelic. The front is a colourful route planner that extends from Shetland to the Peak District. The reverse of the sheet is a bonus contour map of the whole of Great Britain.
• Southern Map - The Southern Map in English or Welsh. The front is a colourful route planner that matches and overlaps with the Northern Map. It covers an area that includes York to the north and the Lizard to the south. The reverse has a bonus contour map of the whole of Great Britain.
• Set of Maps - A pair of the Northern and Southern Maps.
• Signed Maps - Get maps signed by map designer Charlie Peel, Slow Ways Founder Dan Raven-Ellison and key members of the Slow Ways team who've helped to make the maps happen.
• Get maps - We'll be sending the maps to you!
• Give maps - You'll be funding maps for us to send to politicians, decision makers and key influencers. You can pick to be sent maps as rewards still too!
• Give maps to schools - Pick this reward and we'll send maps to schools, colleges and universities that have registered with us to request copies.

Most of the maps come folded. There is a specific reward for flat maps. Flat maps are more expensive for us to ship and handle. If you pick the flat maps reward you can choose between receiving either two or four maps. 

We plan to deliver the English maps in this summer. We'll be designing the Welsh and Scottish versions over the next few months and plan to deliver those in the autumn.

FAQs

• What area do the maps cover? Great Britain and Scotland's islands.
• When will the maps arrive? We hope to deliver the English maps in August and the Welsh and Scottish Gaelic maps this autumn.
• Do the maps fit together to make one big map? Yes.
• How big are the maps? Each sheet is 126cm x 95cm. The Northern Map is portrait and the Southern Map is landscape. 
• Are the maps flat or folded?  Most of the rewards are for folded maps. There is a specific reward for Flap Maps. 
• What will you do with the money you raise? We'll be using the funding to promote, print and distribute maps. Many maps will be sent as rewards to people who support this crowdfunder. We will use the funding to send more maps to politicians, decision makers and influencers who can help to bring Slow Ways to life.

Thank you!

Thank you very much for your support. Please do contact us if you have any questions.

And a big thanks to Paul Cochrane who took the beautiful photos of the maps that you can see on this page.

You can find out more about Slow Ways and support the initiative by walking and reviewing routes at www.slowways.org.