WALK ENGLAND June 2009

Welcome! 

Camden NHS' Walking Maps were launched in May.  Walk England has worked on this pilot project with the primary care trust to develop a series of maps of health walks around some of the doctors' surgeries in the Borough.  The design and format of these maps is an exciting devleopment in mapping for health walks, with the maps being made available in a 'prescription pad' format for GP's and other health professionals to tear off and hand to patients wanting to take more exercise.  You can download maps for Bloomsbury, Kentish Town, Walks around the Royal Free and onto Hampstead Heath and around Kings Cross.

From next week our online community pages will include the option to create (or select to be part of) several special interest groups.  You can create your own group so you can discuss local walking issues or join in one of the other specialist groups for more focussed discussion on specific topics.  The groups will also include geographically based regional groups to enable better cross-sector working at a regional level. The successful Walk England Professional Network (WEPN) London Region events have spawned interest in cross-sector regional groups in other parts of the country and we are interested in hearing from other regions who would like to host similar events.

Walking is unique in that it engenders so many agendas from physical activity to health and transport, leisure, environment, planning and schools.  Bringing professionals together from across the various sectors is crucial to ensure that local projects have added value and to can be a focus for Local Strategic Partnership work to meet a whole range of Local Area Agreement targets through promoting walking.

For those amongst you who are excited rather than terrified of the new technologies, there are a number of applications that are now available via Google Maps that you might be interested in finding out more about.  See our Resources pages on how to get up to date with some of the most interesting new applications for walking such as Street View, My Tracks and Underground, Overground....

Veronica Reynolds, Operations Director