Walk Unlimited named promotion partner for National Trails

Walk Unlimited have recently been named promotion partner for the 15 National Trails in England and Wales. We are absolutely delighted to have won the contract, which was awarded after a competitive process. We love National Trails, and we're excited about this new role which gives us the opportunity to share our enthusiasm with the wider public.

As Promotion Partner we'll be working with staff at Natural England and CCW, along with trail staff directly involved with managing the National Trails. Our role is to promote the Trails. At the moment this is done in a low-key way by the 2 agencies responsible for the routes. We plan to take a fresh look at how information about the Trails is presented and to use new technologies to reach out to new audiences across the UK and abroad.

Having Walk Unlimited acting as promotion partner means that the Trails will not have to allocate resources from their budgets to promote the family of National Trails. They will, of course, still be able to produce their own promotional material and have their own websites if they wish. We'll offer advice and support on this as required but our main role will be to ensure that all the information people need to enjoy the Trails is freely available and easy to understand. Despite being called Walk Unlimited we fully understand the needs of cyclists, riders, runners and all other users of the Trails and we will enable website users an option to see only services directly relevant to them.

Becoming the promotion partner is wonderful news for Walk Unlimited. Many of us have worked on National Trails in the past and we have a deep love for them. We've long wanted to get involved with promoting them as we know that there are many people out there who don't realise how wonderful they are and that they offer great experiences for everyone whatever their ability or experience - they're not just for long distance walkers. You'll need to give us a bit of time though - the new website won't be up and running straight away, we'll need to do a lot of work to make sure we get it right ... but we're confident you'll like it.

This isn't just a short-term relationship - we'll be promoting National Trails for a long time. We will be working to ensure they stay at the top of the list of promoted walking, cycling and riding routes for many years. They are the best managed Trails in the country and we're hoping that they'll also become the best known and most enjoyed.

We are 100% committed to providing free access to information and indeed if we weren't, we wouldn't have been selected to be the promotion partner. Natural England and CCW are contributing to the initial set-up costs of the project and ongoing costs will be met by Walk England. We plan to do this through working with selected commercial partners and through small scale income generation through guidebook and map sales. We don't anticipate the project will generate income but we hope to be able to raise enough funds to allow continued development.