Hello walkers and writers 👋🏻

At a time when the most celebrated outdoor adventures are often the most challenging, fast-paced and extreme, I’m hitting the brakes and strolling along at the back of the group.

It seems I’m not alone in seeking out the leisurely life. Over the last four years, The Writer’s Walk has led me to people who also enjoy the outdoors at a slower pace. That includes Kyri and Ross Miller, the founders of Dayhike magazine. They’re creating a community in print, making connections through stories of people, places and small everyday moments that make time outdoors so meaningful. Their latest edition came out recently and it feels particularly special as they invited me to contribute an article. It’s all about slowing your pace and measuring your walks in moments. I’m in fine company – there are some truly lovely pieces in the magazine, paired with stunning photography that makes me want to grab my boots and set off. Dayhike is available to buy online, and you can catch a cheeky peek of my piece over on The Writer’s Walk Instagram feed.

Find me on Instagram

So with the news roundup complete, let’s get on to this edition where I share something I’ve been experimenting with recently.

Walking

I think the key to finding inspiration on a walk is to look at the things you see differently. I’ve said before that the only way for something to be interesting is to be interested in it – it’s an active process. A fallen leaf might not seem compelling at first glance, but look at it from a different perspective and a story might emerge. But sometimes we might need a nudge to help us find that different perspective, and that’s where the prompt cards come in. The idea is to carry them with you on a walk and use them randomly. When I spot something unusual or that catches my attention for more than a moment, I shuffle the cards, or pull one from my pocket without looking, and use it to think about what I’m seeing. Like these plastic beads on a patch of wet grass1…

Sometimes the prompt card seems to be made for what I’m looking at…

And sometimes it takes a bit more pondering…

I’ve discovered through my workshops that the prompt cards work indoors, not just when you’re out in nature…

It works with things people have made, like street art, signage or murals….

You can use it to spark new ideas about what you see every day inside your home…

And sometimes it creates a little bit of natural magic…

So for your walk this time, I invite you to carry some writing prompts with you so you can draw on them whenever something catches your attention. And you can try this anywhere – in a city, on a country path, up a hill, on the beach, in a garden or park, in a museum or even in your own home. The idea is to use the prompt to help you look at, and think about, what you see in a different way.

Writing

Here are a few more prompts to try on your next walk. Jot them onto small cards or scraps of paper and pop them in your pocket or backpack along with a notebook and pen.

• It comes alive at night. What does it do?

• Describe it in 10 words

• What can it see?

• Give it a song

• It’s gone viral on social media. Why?

• What’s missing?

• Where will it be 100 years from now?

• Give it a name – make it playful

Then all you need to do is pause when something catches your attention, pull out one of your prompts, then starting writing and see where the story takes you.

Thanks for reading. I said at the start that I’d like to get your thoughts on something. I’ve been playing with the idea of turning the prompt cards into ‘a thing’. My idea is to create The Writer’s Walk deck, with 52 cards, and maybe a few jokers thrown in for good measure. I have more than enough prompts, so my first step would be to make a prototype to play around with to see how they look and feel. So my questions to you are: what do you think? Would you be interested in something like this?

Leave a comment

Happy walking and writing until next time.

Sarah

More from The Writer’s Walk

If you enjoyed this edition, check out Walking around a library where I show you how to find a writing prompt inside the pages of a book.

“I believe you need to create a system that prioritises women at every stage, which means not just the design but the business model and company structure itself.”

That’s one of the changes Veronica ‘Ronnie’ Legg thinks needs to happen in the outdoor gear industry to switch the focus of design from men to being more inclusive of women.

Ronnie’s the founder of Vertura, an outdoor clothing brand with gear designed by women, for women. We met at the National Outdoor Expo in 2025 thanks to Rebecca Dawson who tipped me off that there was someone at the show taking a female-first approach to designing outdoor gear for women. Having struggled for years with finding technical gear that fits right and feels great, I headed to the Vertura stand where Ronnie told me a bit about how and why she launched her own brand.

Ronnie’s had an impressive design career. She spent 5 years as a garment designer for Rab before moving to Alpkit where she worked for almost 10 years – starting as a senior designer and moving up the ladder to become the brand’s Head of Clothing Design.

Having held a high position with an outdoor brand I was intrigued by why she’d launched her own clothing brand specifically for women, so I got in touch to ask her about it. I feel I’ve learned so much from our chat and I hope you enjoy it, and feel as inspired by Ronnie’s story, as I do.

Hi Ronnie, please tell our readers about yourself

I was always into the outdoors as a kid, and dabbled in a lot of activities through Scouts and then university. I did everything from sailing to kayaking, hiking to caving – but the one that stuck was climbing. I was pretty academic and enjoyed science at school, but I also loved textiles (although I didn’t feel like I had much of an artistic side). And although I was kind of rubbish at PE, I loved being active and understanding how the body worked – which is what led me to study Sports Science at university. Luckily there was a degree course at Leeds that had an outdoor activities focus, and allowed you to choose modules in textiles and design as they related to clothing and equipment. I found I was most interested in human physiology in extreme environments, and how textiles plays a part in enabling people to survive and perform in those environments.

I would have gone straight on to do a Masters in Sportswear Design, but sadly the course stopped running the year I graduated – so instead I took a job living and working at Plas Y Brenin (the National Mountain Centre). That allowed me to get lot of my outdoor qualifications, and discover what it was like to work as an instructor but ultimately I realised it wasn’t the job for me. I love being outdoors and introducing people to your passion is very rewarding, but the stress of being responsible for other people’s safety day-in, day-out and meeting a new group every couple of hours I found exhausting. North Wales was a fantastic place to live and play though, I made friends for life there and it’s still my favourite place to go rock climbing.

After getting a basic grounding in textiles during my undergraduate degree, I eventually found a Masters course in Clothing Product Development. That touched on aspects of design, fit and sizing, marketing and business – but honestly so much of what I know was learnt on the job itself, and out on the hill using clothing and observing others. It’s a hugely broad vocation, and involves more science, maths, spreadsheets and email than drawing – which often surprises people!

The Masters course led to a job at Rab where I worked for 5 years in the design team before moving on to Alpkit. I spent almost a decade there developing the entire clothing range from what was originally one down jacket and some t-shirts, to a full range covering everything from hiking to biking and even swimming.

What came first – climbing or designing clothing for climbers?

I fell in love with climbing the first time I got on a climbing wall and then those first moments outside on Southern Sandstone. I was totally hooked, but the great thing about it as an activity is how broad it is. I’ve progressed from trad rock climbing outdoors, to winter in Scotland and Canada, then on to bigger mountains in the Alps, the Andes and the Himalayas over the last 20+ years. I have always been obsessed with the clothing and gear involved, spending hours poring over Field and Trek catalogues as a kid, but the design side took a while for me to discover. Not identifying as a naturally creative or artistic person (I can’t draw!) meant I didn’t see Design as an obvious career path. I considered becoming an outdoor instructor, and did that for a little while, but the more I learnt the more I realised that designing outdoor gear was as much a science as it was an art – and it was something I could do.

You’ve been designing outdoor clothing for over 15 years. Can you tell me about the most challenging, unusual and fun things you’ve worked on?

The most challenging thing to design from a technical perspective was one of the last pieces I worked on at Rab, which was a waterproof down jacket using a bonded baffle construction to reduce weight and eliminate excess fabric. It was a new way of making something so it took a lot of figuring out compatibility between different materials, the order of make and the impact it had on production processes – all of which had to be communicated to the factory responsible for making it. I’m pleased to say it worked and the product is still in the range today, while the construction technique has been applied to more and more styles.

The most unusual – or rather, the thing I never expected to be designing, was swimwear. It’s quite different to a lot of outdoor design, as you’re intentionally going to get wet in it! And it’s basically underwear, so it comes with a different set of challenges.

It’s hard to pick what was the most fun, as I enjoy the variety of different types of products I’ve worked on over the years (and there have been so many!).

When did you first notice a problem with outdoor gear aimed at women? And what were your frustrations?

It was apparent to me from the start that the choice of options for women was much more limited than it was for men. In my early years hiking with Scouts I was wearing men’s clothing; army surplus trousers that would fall down, a men’s Helly Hansen baselayer and my brother’s waterproof jacket. That worked ok (although everything was a bit big!) until I hit puberty and started getting curves. Then I realised I needed women’s fitted styles, but half of the things I wanted only came in men’s – or they had less features, or were less practical in some way. It has got better over the years, but there is still a disparity of choice when you look at the more technical options.

With so many women not just getting outdoors, but leading the way these days, why is it still so hard for us to find gear that works for us?

The thing that people don’t realise is how much of the industry is dictated by men. They are the gate keepers and decision makers at the top of the vast majority of companies; middle management may have more women involved, but there are very few companies with more than a handful of women at Director level or above. That matters, not because those men don’t care what women think, but because they are blind to their own biases. It’s been proven in extensive research that companies with more diverse leadership teams (and that can be in age, gender, sexual orientation or race) are more innovative and more successful in the long run, because they are better at problem solving.

The issue has always been that women’s styles sell fewer than men’s, and are therefore seen as less commercial. But that’s because they’ve been created in a business structure designed for and by men, which impacts the product range and marketing output. Lack of diversity means this ‘problem’ isn’t seen as an opportunity to really listen to what women want and respond to that through product and marketing, but is reduced to looking at the bottom line of figures on a spreadsheet. It is possible to avoid these pitfalls but I believe you need to create a system that prioritises women at every stage, which means not just the design but the business model and company structure itself.

Designing a product is the easy bit: getting permission to design it is the first barrier, and then actually getting it made is the next. There are many more along the way which might prevent that product ever reaching the woman who would really appreciate it. Most of those barriers are gates which have to be held open by men for you to get anywhere. I got sick of there always being another gate to push through, so I decided to take another approach and try and build a business that has engineered out as many of those barriers as possible from the get-go.

What other things contribute to the male-centric design focus, such as the training, research or a lack of female champions within the industry itself?

There is very little academic ‘training’ in outdoor gear design available. Some people come from fashion design which is often streamed into menswear or womenswear, but not from a functional perspective – it’s more style and convention based, which then bleeds through into outdoor design. That’s not to say that’s always a bad thing, but sometimes it can lead to compromises in functionality.

The male-centric bias issue is more insidious than that (if you haven’t read it, Invisible Women by Caroline Crialdo Perez explains how the gap in data has led to a world designed in a way that disadvantages women at every turn).

It’s vital that we start from women’s needs, using data that is taken from female populations, and applying it to the problems that real women face in the outdoors. So rather than saying ‘make a waterproof trouser in women’s sizing for walking that costs £X, that we can sell at least 500 of – oh and it has to be in black because it needs to use the same fabric as the men’s version’, starting from first principles and making what women want and need (not what men think will sell to women because they have no other choice!).

We also need to challenge the idea that ‘not enough women do that’ is a valid reason to not serve those women. We might be a smaller slice of the market, but it is growing and the more women discover the outdoors, and are comfortable in their outdoor clothing, the more role models that creates and that has an upward spiral effect.

How important is it to use the right gear for the activity you’re doing, including the way it fits and feels?

My stint working at Plas Y Brenin and as a leader on expedition to Svalbard definitely hammered home the need for durability in clothing that you rely on for your safety.

The difference between ill-fitting or poorly performing clothing, and the right fit and functionality can be as severe as life or death in extreme cases. It’s entirely possible to catch your crampon on excess material around the ankle of your trousers and end up in a crumpled heap at the bottom of a slope. It might seem innocuous, but in high consequence situations these little things can make a huge difference. Or take the thermal insulating properties of a jacket that someone relies on to keep them from getting hypothermia; fit affects how much warm air is trapped, and could make the difference between an uncomfortable experience and ending up in hospital.

At a less extreme level is simply the fact that if you are more comfortable you have more fun! That’s really important when people are first starting out in the outdoors, because if they have a good experience and enjoy themselves they are likely to do it again. If they have a miserable time because they got cold and wet, or because they felt self-conscious in the trousers that don’t fit their body shape, then they are less likely to want to repeat the experience. It can literally make the difference between someone developing a life-long healthy habit of exercising outdoors, or never wanting to leave a city again.

What gear needs are unique to women and where are the mistakes most outdoor brands make with this?

Fit is a huge part of this. Women are so much more varied in shape (particularly with hip to waist ratios) that we need more options to choose from (not less!). Making the same model of trousers in several different fit options (not just sizes) is one thing that is often overlooked. It’s not easy for small brands, but the bigger ones could be doing this and a lot aren’t. Building adaptability into clothing using stretch and elastic can also help as many women experience fluctuations in our weight and shape over the course of a month (and the years!).

The second biggest issue is clothing that facilitates going to the toilet outdoors, particularly when it comes to layers in winter. It’s seen as a bit taboo, or just not really thought through properly at the design stage, or it ‘costs too much’ to solve – when it’s a problem every single woman has every time they go out for a long day.

Third is pocket placement and functionality. Our shape affects what works, what is comfortable and what is accessible – and it is different according to our different shapes. Again, this often isn’t well considered, or deemed too difficult to solve or not important to women so the pocket gets left off entirely!

What advice can you give women when it comes to choosing gear in terms of function and fit?

You have to feel comfortable. That means physically and psychologically. If you don’t feel confident in what you are wearing, it can impact your mood and that affects your enjoyment. If you find leggings comfortable and you like wearing them, go for it. But if you prefer not to be so on show, choose legwear that fits you well and won’t ride down during the course of the day or rub under a rucksack. Just make sure you’re choosing fabrics that are appropriate – avoid cotton as it holds onto moisture and gets really cold when damp.

Choose clothing that will protect you from the weather and keep you comfortable, whether that’s a waterproof to keep the rain out, or enough layers to keep you warm (and that you can take off to cool yourself down). Consider how all your layers work together: do they fit over the top of each other in the order you want to wear them? Can you ventilate to cool down without swapping out layers?

Check key areas for places that interact with your rucksack if you are carrying one, so avoid seams or fastenings that might rub under your hip belt or shoulder straps.

Think about how you like to organise things: are you a person who wants their phone handy in a pocket at all times? If so, make sure the layers you wear allow for that. Do you really keep a folded map in your jacket pocket, or wear a helmet under your waterproof? Look for features that serve your needs, not just because a (male) magazine reviewer said you need them.

Remember you are an individual, and what works for you might not work for someone else. So experiment and find what works for you – and have fun doing it!

I’ve noticed how some outdoor brands lean more towards the style, fashion or look of their clothing and it feels like the technical aspects are secondary. How important is style and fashion when it comes to outdoor gear?

Many people like to think they aren’t influenced by style or fashion, but if you take a look at yourself or a catalogue from 20 years ago you will see that’s not the case. Outdoor clothing design does evolve alongside fashion trends, although there’s usually a lag of several years. (Trouser fit is a good example – skinny jeans influenced how tight fitting outdoor legwear became popular in the 2010’s, and it is heading back the other way now that wide leg cuts have come back into fashion).

What is important is that function is considered where it is the primary concern: baggy wide leg trousers might be great for functional movement while bouldering, but would be inappropriate for mountaineering trousers. One aspect of fashion that doesn’t have too much negative impact on function is colour, although it could be argued having a bright visible colour jacket is safer if you get into trouble compared to a black or beige jacket.

The current Gorpcore / Athleisure trends are almost working the other way round, with outdoor influencing fashion. That’s no bad thing: with more younger people getting into the outdoors, it’s important that they are prepared for the weather, so better that they are wearing clothing that has a chance of protecting them from the elements. Although don’t get me started on the cropped waterproof or down jacket styles out there…!

There are loads of outdoor influencers, often ambassadors of clothing and gear brands. Who do you think is missing from the story when it comes to gear specifically designed for women?

It is slowly getting better, but there has been too much of a focus on women who are young, white and conventionally attractive. We need more diversity across the board – not just one type of woman, but women of different ages, sizes and shapes, race and background that reflect real people in the outdoors.

As a designer your work is both technical and creative. How do your own outdoor adventures, like climbing or walking, play a role in the creative aspect of your design work?

I’m always thinking about design, especially if I’m out walking or climbing. It can be a creative inspiration like the colours, textures or patterns I see out in nature, or a more technical issue around temperature regulation or zip placement. I’m always looking at what people are wearing, talking to the people I’m out with and storing up a bank of ideas for later. I find being active outdoors can also unlock a problem that I’ve been struggling with, by helping me think differently (or by letting my subconscious work on it while I figure out the next move).

What’s your walking style?

• Happy Hiker

• Reluctant Rambler

• Sunday Stroller

• Wild Weekender

Wild Weekender.

Headphones or head in the clouds?

Mostly head in the clouds, unless I’m doing a repetitive training hike somewhere I’ve been loads of times before – in which case I need a podcast to distract me from clock watching or the sound of my own breathing.

What’s the most memorable walk you’ve ever done?

This is a hard one, as there have been so many. I’d probably have to say the approach to Ama Dablam up the Khumbu valley above Namche Bazaar. It’s such a spectacular region, and obviously because it’s on the route to Everest Basecamp it’s a trail that has so much meaning to so many people. It’s so varied too, from the dusty trail to the Rhododendron forests, to the pray flags and suspensions bridges, the temple gongs and juniper bush fires, and the views of countless summits over 6000m high. It’s somewhere I’d recommend anyone went at least once, even if you’re not a climber.

If you could take a walk with anyone, real or fictional, alive or gone, who would it be? And why?

Julie Tullis – she died on K2 in 1986 but it was her book Clouds from Both Sides that inspired me to get into mountaineering, and her son was the first person to take me rock climbing outdoors.

One word round

• One thing you always take with you on a walk?
  Snacks

• One word to describe how you feel about design?
  Excited

• One word to describe how it felt to launch Vertura?
  Liberating

Finally, please can you share a walking- or climbing-inspired reflection for our readers?

You are always capable of more than you think.

Ronnie, this has been so inspiring. Thanks for talking so openly and generously about Vertura and your passion for climbing and the outdoors.

If you’d like to see Ronnie’s range of thermal legwear and accessories (the wrist warmers are fab!), visit the Vertura website, follow on Instagram or head to the National Outdoor Expo on 21-22 March where she’ll have a stand.

Happy walking and writing until next time.

Sarah and Ronnie

More from The Writer’s Walk

If you enjoyed reading Ronnie’s story, take a look at my interview with Rebecca Dawson, founder of Vampire Outdoors, former Chair of Trustees at the Ramblers, and plus size outdoor gear champion who’s helping every body get outdoors.

Hello walkers and writers 👋🏻

And welcome to everyone who subscribed recently. For anyone new here, I’m a writer who walks to boost my spirits and inspire my writing. If you’d like to know more about this newsletter and why I started it then the edition where I explain the philosophy behind The Writer’s Walk is a good place to begin.

Today’s edition is the first in a new series I’m calling Field Notes. The idea behind it has been bubbling away since I created The Writer’s Walk in 2022 but it’s taken me a while to muster the courage to share it. That’s because Field Notes is a little more personal, and ragged around the edges, than my usual editions because it explores some of my own walks and what I find on them.

So with the welcomes and intro complete, let’s step into my first Field Note. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Millington Wood and Sylvan Dale

This morning I woke with the sound of songbirds. It’s the first time this has happened since I moved to East Yorkshire and it’s quite lovely that it coincides with Imbolc, the first day of spring. It’s also the first day of February, and there’ll be a full moon tonight – the Snow Moon. And for the first time that I can ever remember, I didn’t need a calendar to tell me about the moon’s current phase. I could tell it was almost here as I walked through town yesterday evening, following the light of the moon as it led me home. I rarely saw the moon in London. The light pollution drains all the light. Does it seem odd that I wrote that? How light can drain light? Seeing the moon so clearly last night reminded me that without the darkness of an unlit sky we can never truly appreciate the magic of the light.

I’m letting my thoughts drift like this while I sit on a bench overlooking Millington Wood. It’s becoming my favourite local wood and I came here today to look for rowan trees, listen to the birds and to spot other signs of spring. I’ve recently started carrying books with me when I walk, something I’ll share in a regular edition at some point, and today I brought Lia Leendertz’s Almanac – A Seasonal Guide to 2026. The theme of her almanac this year is the forests and the trees and I brought it to read the chapter on February as I enjoy a brew with a view. Although the murkiness of the day is making the view a bit hard to see.

It’s busier than usual today, with lots of couples walking their dogs, and families with young children. Until a short time ago, the woodland below me was filled with their chatter, interspersed with delighted squeals from a small child, and the occasional bark from a dog. I’m the only person wandering here alone right now – which is something I’m used to. I do see other solitary hikers when I’m out and about, but I see more people in pairs or groups. I like wandering alone but sometimes I wonder if that makes me unusual.

I came here for silence and the presence of other people interrupted that plan. But only briefly. The groups gradually peeled away, returning to their cars, and as the wood settles back into silence, I hear the sound of a high-pitched, short and sharp bird call. I look up and there in the milky sky, a bird of prey, perhaps a honey buzzard, is soaring above the canopy. Perhaps she was also waiting for this moment of quiet and solitude. The type that can only be found among the trees.

I leave the bench and head down the steep steps that weave between the trees. Millington is an ancient wood. It’s only small – just 52 acres – but it’s one of the richest botanical woodlands in the East Riding and is a nature reserve and Site of Special Scientific Interest. It dates back around 1,000 years and, at its heart, a small pocket of ash trees remain.

As I reach the valley I see that the path is blocked by a fallen Norway spruce and a cluster of its leaves have been placed on a stump, almost like an offering. Millington Wood is managed by the East Riding of Yorkshire Council’s Countryside Access Team. There’s a note on their webpage that explains how they’re managing the woodland, which includes removing the Norway spruce that cast heavy shade. I wonder if this tree fell by accident or by force.

Walking on, once again I find myself looking up, drawn to the sound of the birds. I spot this chap sleeping on the job, his mossy cap keeping him warm, no doubt.

Millington wood sits within Lily Dale and I wonder if this name is what draws me here. I come from a long line of women, on my mum’s side, who were either called Lily or, like my mum, Lily was their middle name. I think of my mum for a while. This month marks the anniversary of her death. Three years gone but still the voice of reason in my head.

Back at my car I realise I’m not done with walking yet today, so maybe now’s the time to explore nearby Sylvan Dale. I’ve spotted the finger post that points toward it many times on my drives down to Millington but have yet to have a nosey. Now’s my chance.

I drive down and park beside the road between two cars, then head down the track, crossing a footbridge to reach the start of the Dale. As I start my walk, I hear a call above, look up and spot my feathered friend. I wish I was better at identifying birds. I don’t know if she’s a hawk, a kestrel or a falcon. I do know that I’m happy she’s here.

The Yorkshire Wolds Way passes through Sylvan Dale and as I begin the steady ascent up its steep sides I make a mental note to get myself hill-walking fit ahead of my plan to walk the whole trail at some point this year.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a Sylvan is a being who inhabits the woods. Perhaps that’s how this place got its name and I wonder if there’s a folklore connected to it. I wonder, too, where all the trees have gone.

The Yorkshire Wolds is an interesting place to walk. We have hills rather than mountains and it’s what I’d call a soft landscape. But don’t let that fool you into thinking this makes for easy walking. The hills are deceptive and the public footpaths offer sharp ascents that get your heart pumping. It’s always wise to stop when you reach the top and look back at where you walked, so I do that now. The clouds are dropping down to meet the land but in summer I imagine the views will be glorious. I make another mental note to bring a picnic for my warm weather walks here.

Earlier this week I chatted with someone from Derbyshire. We’d compared the landscapes of home and she shared with me that she finds vast, flat landscapes disorienting. They’re hard to navigate, she told me, and the open space brings a feeling of agoraphobia.

I’m reminded of this conversation as I stand at the bottom of Sylvan Dale, its valley drifting away in a curve ahead of me, its grassy sides rising swiftly on all sides. I feel a moment of claustrophobia. A fear I’ve carried with me my whole life. I’m not afraid of flat landscapes. As a lowland lass, growing up around Hull and the Holderness, I barely raised my heartbeat when I walked its flattened paths.

So I wonder now, as I stand between the hills thinking of that conversation, did growing up in the Yorkshire flatlands contribute to my claustrophobia? And is it why I’m also not good with heights? For a moment I feel hemmed in between these hills, unable to see beyond the curve of the Dale as it swerves away, not knowing what’s beyond.

And maybe that’s what adventure looks like for me. A gentle hill – at least compared with most in the UK – a dabble along the Dales as I wander the Sylvan curves.

There’s a thrill to be found in doing something for the first time, just for yourself and no one else. Even more if you choose to do it slowly and silently so you can savour every sip. Like acknowledging the claustrophobic feeling that threatens at the corners of my mind, then taking a step onward, and being rewarded for facing my fear and walking on anyway. It’s not a reward I could measure by awards, applause or gravitas. But by the contentment in being who I am. And by embracing the person I’m becoming through my footsteps.

As I carry on up the hill, the clouds sink toward me, and I decide to turn back. Sylvan Dale will still be here, ready to welcome me another time. I hear a final call from my raptor and think about what adventure means to her – and what it means to me. And I realise adventure doesn’t need to be fierce or wild. It can be soft and unexpected like the kiss of a hill as it rises up beneath your feet.

As always, thanks for reading and walking with me. I hope you’ve enjoyed this Field Note – and maybe feel inspired to try your own. I love hearing what you find from these posts, as well as what you discover on your own walks, so please let me know what you find.

Leave a comment

Happy walking and writing until next time.

Sarah

More from The Writer’s Walk

If you enjoyed this edition, check out Walking to fall in love with a landscape for inspiration on how to make a new place feel like home.

Hello walkers and writers 👋🏻

One of the best things to have happened from creating The Writer’s Walk is the chance it’s given me to celebrate other people. As I look back on the interviews I did this year, the golden thread that connects each person is their sense of purpose. Every one of them, in their own unique way, offers something positive for others to think about, learn from or to simply enjoy. They’re generous with their time and they celebrate others.

This year I walked and talked with 10 incredible people. Here’s a roundup of their stories, with links to each interview.

Susannah is an author, editor, teacher and co-founder of Professional Writing Academy. We chatted about her wiggly and inspiring career – from editing literary icons to co-founding Professional Writing Academy – spanning writing, teaching and nurturing new talent.

Tim is a writer and communications consultant whose impressive 30-year career spans journalism, publishing, ghostwriting and commercial writing. He shared his thoughts on commercial writing and poetry and the thread that runs between, as well an exclusive preview of his latest poem.

Jen is a happiness and nature champion, and eternal optimist. We chatted about hiking and writing, her role as Chair of Trustees for the Peak District National Park Foundation, dealing with blisters and cows and how to find joy in a heavy world.

Hana is the CEO and co-founder of the walking, wayfinding and nature connection app, Go Jauntly. We chatted about the barriers that prevent people from getting outdoors, the lack of diversity and representation, how walking helps spark ideas, the mental health benefits of noticing nature in the city, and how she’s using tech to take on those challenges.

Nick is a writer and tone of voice master who writes the wonderful Tone Knob newsletter. We went for a ‘walk n talk’ in Oxford to find words in the wild, together with a stroll around the Pitt Rivers Museum where we had a fascinating chat with a curator about magic, witches and wands, and I showed him my favourite ever museum object.

Rebecca owns plus size outdoor gear store Vampire Outdoors, is a former Chair of Trustees for the Ramblers and a co-founder of Every Body Outdoors, a community action group fighting for clothing, gear and representation for plus size bodies in the outdoor movement. We chatted about how she got into walking, her time with the Ramblers, and how outdoor brands are missing a massive trick by not making gear in bigger sizes.

Emily is a copywriter who headed up some pretty impressive brand copywriting teams before going freelance. We went for a joy-filled walk along the Regent’s Canal where we chatted about how she got into copywriting, the hurdles she kicked down along the way, how to make the perfect crisp sandwich, and why everyone is interesting when you’re interested in them.

Jonnie is a writer who became a tour guide to get over his dislike of London and history. I joined him on one of his walks around Spitalfields where we chatted about exploring London to fall in love with it, why having no shame is the key to discovering new stuff, and why the UK’s capital is a bottomless pit of intrigue.

Olivia is a sustainability strategy and communications consultant, nature writer and photographer. She introduced me to one of her local walks in the South Downs where we enjoyed the views, met some four-legged locals, and talked about nature and the importance of listening to it.

Vikki is a copywriting legend. She created #CopywritersUnite, the hashtag that connects copywriters and copy lovers all around the world, and she shouts non-stop about the value good writing – and good writers – bring to brands. We met for a #CopySafari in Shoreditch where we chatted about the excitement of seeing your words in the wild and some of the brands she’s written for. Get ready for some name drops!

Thanks for reading. Happy walking and writing until next time.

Sarah

These words are from Vikki Ross: writer, walker and relentless champion of copywriting and copywriters. It probably shouldn’t have surprised me that she can’t pin down her fave bit of copy. Vikki’s been writing for major brands for more than 25 years, helping them find their tone of voice and bring their words to life.

She’s a vital voice in the copywriting industry – regularly sharing knowledge and jobs through her LinkedIn posts, giving talks, mentoring writers, and shouting non-stop about the value good writing – and good writers – bring to brands.

In 2012 she started #CopywritersUnite, the hashtag that’s connecting copywriters and copy lovers all around the world, both online, and in person through CopywritersUnite nights and lites – informal drinks with no tickets, no speakers and no agenda. Just a chance for people to connect and chat.

Vikki and I met ten years ago when I went to my first #CopywritersUnite night in London, which she was hosting. I’ve always admired how she celebrates copywriting and copywriters. In a competitive creative industry this is rare a gift. So I was truly honoured when she agreed to meet me for a #CopySafari in Shoreditch – one of the best places in London to see advertising in the wild. As we wandered, we talked about the ads we spotted and some of the brands she’s written for (get ready for some name drops). We hope you enjoy reading our interview.

Hi Vikki, please tell me about yourself in your own way: who, what, where

I’m Vikki, I’m a copywriter and I’m coming to you live from London.

You didn’t start out as a copywriter – how did you get your first writing gig and what was it?

I was an admin assistant at a tiny direct marketing agency. Their Creative Director wrote reader offers in the national press. One day, I asked if I could write one – it performed well so I got to write more.

What was the first thing you wrote for TV or a billboard?

I think the first thing I wrote for TV was a voiceover script for a Sky Cinema ad. And the first thing I wrote for a billboard was for four billboards – Sky was promoting its newly rebranded TV channels, Sky One, Sky Arts and Sky Living, and introducing a new one, Sky Atlantic – I’d written the tagline (that was the headline) for each brand.

How did it feel seeing your words in the wild for the first time?

Oh, it’s so exciting. Not just for the first time but every time.

What’s your favourite bit of copy that you’ve written?

I can’t choose a favourite bit of copy – what would all my other bits of copy think?

I’ll give you a recent favourite…

Last year, I created a new voice for Range Rover, Defender, Discovery and Jaguar. The brief was to create a clear distinction between each vehicle brand as they’d started to sound the same.

Now, Range Rover is the sophisticated one and says things like ‘Seasoned traveller’ to describe itself and its driver. Defender is the active one and says things like ‘Cliffhanger’ to show off its capabilities on tough terrain. Discovery is the one for adventures with family and friends and says things like ‘For you and your plus one. And your plus one, plus one, plus one, plus one, plus one.’ to talk about how much space it has. And Jaguar is the creative one so there’s a lot of wordplay like ‘Light up the dark’ to talk about its presence on the road.

What’s your favourite bit of copy that you wish you’d written?

I can’t choose a favourite bit of copy – what would all the other bits of copy think?

I’ll give you a recent favourite…

LEGO launched a campaign a couple of years ago with the tagline, ‘Rebuild the world’. I love how, all at once, it talks to and about the state of the world, it includes a word that connects straight back to the brand (‘build’), and it’s a call to action. All that in just three words – things in threes, like statements and slogans, are scientifically proven to make messaging more memorable.

Any #CopyFails that you want to admit to?

Oh yeah, here’s a recent one. There’s a billboard on tube platforms with a line on it I shouldn’t have written. I included it in a list of recommendations because I knew the client would like it, but I hoped they’d like the others more. And now it’s all over London annoying me every time I see it.

And not a #CopyFail but a copy-related fail that I really need to tell someone about – not that anyone can make me feel better about it. I recently wrote an email to Barbara Nokes – you know, the British copywriting legend. After I sent it, I saw it – the typo in the subject line. I couldn’t believe it.

You’re the (often hidden) voice behind many brands. Who would you love to write for but haven’t yet?

Netflix. But Netflix in 2018 when they really nailed their voice.

Apple. I’d love to encourage them to bring back their enviable style. It inspired us to think different and write better.

Tiffany & Co. Their storytelling could be so much more compelling.

Can you tell me about #CopySafari? How did it start? How do you turn what you see on billboards into inspiration for your own work?

I’ve never thought that just looking at stuff on screens at our desks or in meeting rooms was a good enough exercise for reviewing work that needs to work in the wild. We need to know how people act around ads and in-store promos and notice how they react to them. So in 2018, I started taking industry friends out and about to see stuff in situ. As it’s intended.

A #CopySafari informs the techniques I use in my work more than inspires it. While people will read for as long as they’re interested, a billboard isn’t always the place for long copy. Or tiny text – I’m looking at you, Audi. Their copy is consistently good, but drivers can’t read it from their car.

Any tips for people who want to try a #CopySafari of their own? Best places to hunt down words, what to look for, and so on?

Look up and around. Words are everywhere. When you see them, think about where they are, what they’re saying, how they’re saying it and who they’re talking to.

I take brands and agencies out and about to think about all that – they book a #CopySafari as an alternative to a workshop or as part of a team or company away day. It’s a great opportunity to think differently – and to walk and talk.

What’s your walking style – or choose your own if none of these float your boat

• Happy Hiker

• Reluctant Rambler

• Sunday Stroller

• Wild Weekender

Wondering Wanderer.

Headphones or head in the clouds?

Both. Either.

If I’m wearing headphones, I’m listening to a podcast.

What’s the most memorable walk you’ve ever done?

You might’ve noticed from my answers to your earlier questions that I really don’t like picking favourites!

I live in London, and I love London – so much, but I love a walk along a beach. Nothing beats seeing the sea.

If you could take a walk with anyone, real or fictional, alive or gone, who would it be? And why?

Bernice Fitz-Gibbon.

I read her book, Macy’s, Gimbels, and Me, and thought she sounded so fabulous and fun. I would’ve loved to have known her, and worked for her.

Read more about her and other legendary copywriters on this LinkedIn post.

One word round

• One thing you always take with you on a walk?
  Phone
  (I need it to make notes – ideas always come to me when I’m out and about)

• One word to describe how you feel about writing?
  Lucky

  (I still can’t believe I get to write all day for work)

• One word to describe #CopywritersUnite?
  Connection

  (We’re all over the world but the hashtag connects us all)

I know, I know, I cheated and added sentences to my one-word answers. But hey, no one ever told me off for challenging a brief.

Last question: please can you share a walking-inspired writing prompt for our readers?

When I get a brief, I read and research all I can about the brand, their product and their audience. Then I go out for a walk. The idea, the line or even just the word will come to me when I’m not looking for it. So my prompt is to feed your mind then trust it to do the work for you.

Thanks so much for taking me on a #CopySafari Vikki, for sharing some of the thinking behind the work you’ve done for brands like Range Rover, Defender, Discovery and Jaguar, and for everything you do to support and encourage copywriters.

You can follow Vikki on LinkedIn, find out more about #CopywritersUnite, and if you fancy hosting one for copywriters in your city, Vikki’s shared how to do that in this post.

And if you’d like to know more about #CopySafari you can read about it on her LinkedIn post, and if you work for a brand or creative agency and want to book her to take you and your team out, you can email her at vikkirosswrites@mail.com

Happy walking and writing until next time.

Sarah and Vikki

Hello walkers and writers 👋🏻

Where have your wanderings taken you lately? And has the changing of the seasons brought a change to your walks? I have to admit that as the temperature plummeted here in the UK, I’ve felt more inclined to curl up in my new reading nook than to lace up my boots and face the elements. Then it snowed here in Yorkshire and I woke up to find the street outside my new home soft and silent, and the desire to lace up my boots and step outside returned. I’ve always thought of myself as a summer soul, but who knows? Maybe I’m changing, as we humans have a tendency to do.

What about you? Are you heading into hibernation mode or are cold-weather walks your vibe? I’d love to hear from you, so you can always add a comment below.

Leave a comment

Now with the musings complete, let’s get on to this edition where I share some ideas for walking a city.

Walking

What if I told you I’ve found a way to explore a bustling historic city, brimming with tourists, and feel as if I’m the only person there? When you visit a place, especially if it’s for the first time, you might find yourself caught up in the crowds heading to the same ‘must-see’ places in the visitor guide. The Acropolis in Athens, the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, or the ancient city walls of Dubrovnik. (Which I can say from experience becomes very crowded with an hour of them opening to the public in the morning.)

But if you plan your walk for the right time, and are happy to meander rather than map-read your way to each museum, square, statue or landmark, you might find a different side to the city.

I started this as a way to escape crowded streets, which make me feel anxious and trigger a feeling of claustrophobia. Instead of pushing on through, I’d look for an escape route – and would often find one in the form of a side street that no one else was walking along.

It’s now become my favourite way of exploring places like Athens – a busy and often crowded city – where you might find yourself trekking up the hill to the Acropolis to join thousands of people waiting to visit the ancient citadel. The main routes up can get busy, but the area beneath the Acropolis, called Plaka, is a maze of tiny streets that can be surprisingly quiet if you time your walk right.

When I visited Dubrovnik I was delighted to discover that hidden beyond its well-trod paths, squares (and those famous stairs), there are smaller side streets where washing hung out to dry reminds you that this isn’t just a UNESCO-listed city. It’s a home where life and laundry is just as important as museums and landmarks.

And a city where people have brought nature to the narrow streets with potted plants that dot the stairs, hang from balconies and disguise air conditioning units:

Even Venice offers quiet corners. Sure, the main canals, the Rialto Bridge and the Bridge of Sighs are must-see landmarks. But the city of 118 small islands offers many quiet canals:

And a morning walk in a quieter neighbourhood…

Leads to a famous bridge that’s not visited as much as the others as it’s off the beaten track:

Even Amsterdam with its narrow canal paths shared by walkers and cyclists offers some quieter streets when you wander a little further away from the tourist hotspots. Like this side street, just off Utrechtsestraat (which is also worth a wander to explore its shops, cafes and restaurants):

I’ve tried this in all sorts of towns and cities, like Seville, Málaga and Sitges in Spain. And the smaller towns and villages on Greece’s islands seem built for this approach, with their winding streets that are too narrow for cars. Just be ready to head up and down lots of hills as you explore them!

So for your walk this time, I invite you to explore the hidden paths in a busy city. Watch where the crowd is going, then turn in a different direction. Try the side streets instead of the main roads and paths. Here are some tips to help you explore:

• Choose a walkable city that has plenty of pavements (sidewalks) and squares. Heritage or old cities, of the kind you find in Europe, are more likely to have these than sprawling modern cities designed for cars rather than pedestrians.

• Walk early in the morning, just as the sun is rising and before the shops and businesses have opened – but try and avoid the commuter rush hour.

• If you’re in a country where people take siestas, walk just after lunch when people shutter their windows and head home for a few hours – just be mindful of the afternoon heat and sun.

• Explore in the shoulder or low season when there are fewer visitors.

• If you’re in a city where a different language is spoken, follow the drifts of conversation in that language rather than the ones in yours or other languages. It might lead you to quieter residential squares and neighbourhoods and perhaps a small insight to how life unfolds there beyond the tourism brochures.

This isn’t about scaring yourself silly down a dead-end alley. You still need to be mindful of your surroundings – and keep an eye on the map so you don’t get (totally) lost. It’s about opening yourself to curiosity, following your nose (and your instincts) and seeing where it leads.

Sometimes you might find yourself down an unremarkable street. And that’s okay, you can always take the next turn at the end of it and see what lies ahead. But maybe you’ll find a cute cafe that’s not in any of the guidebooks but serves the best coffee in the neighbourhood, you might hear beautiful music drifting from a third floor window, find a pop of flowers on a window ledge, or snippets of conversation that might lead to the start of a story.

Writing

When you find a street or square that surprises you in all the best ways, take some time to look around and imagine who might live or work there. Who walked on this path before you? How far back in time was it: a day, a decade, a century, or more? Where were they going, and why? Did anything get in their way? And how did they overcome it?

See where these prompts take you. Perhaps you’ll find the seed of a story within them.

Thanks for reading. As always, I enjoy hearing what you discover when you try these walking themes. And maybe this approach won’t work in all cities. I suspect it won’t but it’d be interesting to try! I’d love to know what you find.

Leave a comment

Happy walking and writing until next time.

Sarah

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More from The Writer’s Walk

If you enjoyed this edition, check out Walking in zigzags for more inspiration on how to meander around a city.

After years of living in a cramped London flat, I’m now in a house and have more space than I know what to do with. Then I realised that this awkward spot beneath the stairs works perfectly as a reading nook.

The basket is full of books and magazines on nature and hiking, the stack beside them is full of books on walking, and there’s a couple of pieces of landscape- and walking-inspired word art on the wall from a couple of people I’ve interviewed for The Writer’s Walk: poet Tim Rich and artist Mike Abrahams.

I talk a lot about walking and writing but less so about the reading that it goes hand in hand with. Beneath these pages are stories of adventure, resilience and connection with nature and ourselves. Books have always been my safe place, offering comfort when life has been chaotic, answers when I’ve felt lost, and inspiration when I’ve felt doubt. There are books here by people I know, and there are people I now know through reading their books and then reaching out to them.

In the few weeks since I created the nook, it’s become my favourite place in the house. I sit here every morning with my first cup of tea of the day. I dip in and out of the pages, I stick post-it notes to the ones I want to return to, and I scribble quotes I want to think about in a notebook. It’s the loveliest gift I could have given myself.

What about you? Do you have a special place where you like to curl up with a good book?

These words are from Olivia Sprinkel – a nature writer, photographer, sustainability consultant and nature connection guide whose work is focused on the natural world and our connection to it. And she shares some of her experiences of connecting with nature in her book, To Hear The Trees Speak. It’s a beautiful account of the lessons she learned from listening to ten trees on five continents.

Olivia took the time to share one of her local walks in the South Downs with me, where she introduced me to the tenth tree from her book, a grand old beech tree that lives in a small wooded area outside of Lewes. As we walked, we enjoyed the views, met some four-legged locals, and talked about nature and the importance of listening to it. We hope you enjoy reading our interview.

Hi Olivia, please tell us a bit about yourself: where you live, your work in sustainability and how you got there.

Hello! I live in Lewes, East Sussex, on the South Downs. Alongside my writing, I am a sustainability strategy and communications consultant. I’ve been working in sustainability since 2008 – when it was not yet called sustainability! Before then, I’d been working in employee engagement and my first sustainability role was on engaging employees with climate change.

To Hear The Trees Speak, is a personal account of your journey around the world to meet ten trees so you could listen to, and learn from, them. What inspired you to travel around the world to meet ten trees?

The book was the result of hearing a call from the trees. I was working in New York at the time. One June morning in 2018, I read a headline in a newsletter about how the baobab trees in Africa were dying because of climate change. I had lived in Malawi for a year when I was 17-18 years old. I knew the baobab trees, these giant trees that are designed to withstand times of drought. It filled my heart with grief that they were dying. If these trees that had lived so long were dying, it really brought home to me the impact of climate change on the natural world. It made me wonder what collectively we were doing, and what was I doing?

I thought about the trees all day and that evening when I went home to my apartment, I pulled a new notebook from a shelf. I wrote down the original working title of the book, ‘A History of the Future in 10 Trees’. I noted down some of the trees that I wanted to visit and learn from, before it was too late. It felt like such a clear call from the trees, that this was something that I needed to do, it was a now or never moment. I was in a position where I wasn’t in a relationship, I didn’t have dependants. I could give up my job and go to travel to the trees.

The trees you visited each have a specific story or significance, with some being quite famous. How did you choose the ones you met?

There was a mix of reasons. I chose some of the trees as they had a particular history. For example the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi tree in Sri Lanka is the oldest tree recorded to have been planted by humans, over 2000 years ago. I thought that a tree with such a long relationship with humans would be one to learn from. The Vernon Oak in Sheffield was one of the trees saved by the tree protectors when the city had targeted 17,500 trees to be cut down. I wanted to include an urban tree because of the importance of trees in our cities. Others were not specific trees, but species of trees, some of which had a personal significance to me, such as the birch tree in Finland, where my mother is from. The giant sequoias are trees which are being affected by the intensification of wildfires caused by climate change. And some of the trees chose me, such as the olive tree in the south in France and the beech tree outside Lewes, which became my lockdown tree.

When you visited the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi tree you were unable to see it properly or touch it because it’s protected by a wall. How did it feel to visit a tree and not be able to connect with it physically?

It was the tree that I felt least connected with, probably because of this physical separation. The tree is a sacred pilgrimage site for Buddhists and I also experienced feeling that the prayers that people were offering there were not part of my tradition – and the feeling of lack in not having my own tradition. But then visiting the Botanical Gardens in Kandy, I realised that this is my temple, that the trees can be sacred to me, wherever I am.

In Ecuador’s Amazon you used a microphone to listen to the trees. How did it feel the first time you heard water running up the roots and into the tree?

It was such an amazing feeling, full of awe and wonder. Rationally, we know that water is transported from roots up the trunk of the tree, but to actually hear it was ‘wow’. It was even more special, as we had tried listening to a number of different trees without success. Then I had a moment of intuition to try this particular tree, and when it worked, it was a Eureka moment.

Did you practice walking meditation during your time with the trees? If so, what did you gain from that practice?

I didn’t consciously label it as walking meditation, but I definitely practiced mindful walking. That was a key part of my practice – walking slowly and using all my senses. I heard the walking artist Hamish Fulton speak recently, and he said that ‘Walking is the best way I know to be influenced by nature’, and I would agree with that. Walking mindfully connects us physically with the earth and opens us up to the world.

What’s the most significant thing you learned from your time with the trees?

The importance of slowing down and paying attention to trees and the natural world. Trees and plants have so much to teach us if only we take time to listen. And it is our separation from nature which is the root cause of climate change, and there is an urgent need to heal this separation.

Did you always intend to write a book about this experience or did the idea form later?

The idea to visit the trees came as the idea for a book. I wanted to tell a different story about climate change, one which put trees at the centre of the story. As I began to write the book, I realised that I needed to tell the story of my journey to the trees, and therefore needed to include some of my background as well. I think this helps it to stand out from other books about trees – readers have told me that it was the personal story that provided a strong narrative thread, and that while they wouldn’t have read a book of tree facts, they enjoyed learning about the trees through my journey.

You quote the storyteller, Martin Shaw, (p29) who says “We don’t need new stories, we need to go back to the old ones.” If our readers were in search of an old story – a folklore – to connect with, which one would you recommend?

It’s difficult to pick out just one as there are so many! If this is something that interests readers, I would recommend the books of Martin Shaw or Sharon Blackie as a starting point. And going to hear a storyteller if possible – there is something about hearing a story, in community, rather than reading it. There is so much wisdom in the old stories about how to live. One of the recommendations that Martin Shaw makes is to listen out for the image from the story that really resonates with you. It will be different for each of us.

In the book, I mention the Kalevala, which is the Finnish national epic, and it shows how nature was an integral part of the Finnish way of life. The hero says at the end, ‘Nature was my greatest teacher.’ I was lucky enough to attend a session recently hosted by an Indian storyteller, Sowmya Srinivasan. One of the stories was about a girl who could turn into a tree, and it so well illustrated the greed that people show towards the natural world, and the importance of taking care of it.

Other than your own, what’s your favourite book on trees?

The Overstory by Richard Powers is my favourite tree book, and possibly favourite book ever. It is an epic of a novel, spanning human and tree generations, and takes us into a world where the trees are central characters.

What’s your walking style – or invent your own if none of these float your boat!

• Happy Hiker

• Reluctant Rambler

• Sunday Stroller

• Wild Weekender

Mindful Moseyer! I definitely enjoy taking my time and stop to take photographs and make notes. I’m also sometimes a Haiku Hiker, writing haiku as I walk!

Headphones or head in the clouds?

I now mostly walk without headphones so that I can pay attention better and listen to the sounds around me, to allow space for processing thoughts or ideas, as well as connect with the land.

What’s the most memorable walk you’ve ever done?

Oh, that’s a difficult question! I walked the first 10 days of the South West Coast path on my own at a difficult time in my life. It is such a beautiful walk, and I was walking in May when all the hawthorns were in blossom. I’d love to do another long distance walk like that. There’s something about being on the road day after day.

If you could take a walk with anyone, real or fictional, alive or gone, who would it be? And why?

Jane Goodall, in Gombe, Tanzania. I would have loved to see how she related to the land and animals she came to know so well.

One word round

• One thing you always take with you on a walk?
  I have to say my phone! But that’s mainly so I can take photographs. I’ve been taking a picture a day since 1 August 2016 and most of these have been taken whilst walking.

• One word to describe your approach to writing?
  Curiosity

• One word to describe your feelings about trees?
  Love

Last question: please can you share a tree-inspired writing prompt for our readers?

Here’s an invitation for a tree connection walk and write. Next time, you go for a walk, set an intention to connect with a tree. Set out on your walk mindfully, perhaps slower than usual. Let your attention be open and curious towards trees. Let yourself see if there is a particular tree that calls to you. Stop there. Explore the tree with your senses. Touch it (hug it if you like!). Smell it. Observe it, how it moves. Are there any birds, animals or insects there? Sit or stand with the tree for a little while. Observe how the tree is part of where it lives.

From your observations, write a letter or poem to the tree to express praise, and gratitude. As a follow up, you could write a letter from the tree to you – how does the tree see you, what would the tree like you to offer to it and the world.

Thanks so much for the walk ’n’ talk, Olivia. You’ve given me so much to think about in terms of our connection with nature and how we can be more mindful on our walks. And your prompt to write a letter to a tree and then write a letter from the tree back to you is a lovely exercise on reflection.

You can find Olivia on Substack where she writes To Hear The Trees Speak, learn more about her on her website, follow her stories on Instagram where she posts a picture a day, or hire her as a sustainability strategy and comms consultant.

And you should definitely check out her book. To Hear The Trees Speak is a journey into listening. Of listening to the world, of listening to nature and of listening to the trees. But, ultimately, I think it’s about listening to ourselves and to our hearts.

Happy walking and writing until next time.

Sarah and Olivia

More from The Writer’s Walk

If you enjoyed reading about Olivia’s journey into listening try Walking in silence where I explore how to find moments of quiet in a noisy world.

Hello walkers and writers 👋

Long time readers might know that I enjoy going on walking tours and have met some incredible guides in London and learned lots of interesting facts along the way.

One of them is Jonnie Fielding who runs Bowl of Chalk – one of the best London Walking Tours according to Time Out London (and me). I first did a tour with Jonnie in 2024 when he ran a weekend of walks to raise money for London’s Air Ambulance Charity. He led our group around St Paul’s, sharing fun facts and introducing me to what is now my favourite tree in London: the Cheapside plane, which casts its branches over a shop on the corner of Wood Street.

I also discovered that Jonnie’s quite the writer, having written for TV, film and theatre, as well as writing articles for the Londonist and London Calling. Another walking writer?That was something I had to investigate. So I joined him for another walk, this time around Spitalfields and Shoreditch, and asked him if he’d do an interview with me for The Writer’s Walk.

We chatted about exploring London to fall in love with it, growing a business purely through word of mouth, why having no shame is the key to discovering new stuff, and the launch of his new book, Why is Downing Street Painted Black? (and 364 other fun London facts) which comes out on 25 September. We hope you enjoy it.

Hey Jonnie, please introduce yourself

My name is Jonnie Fielding, I’m originally from the Midlands but have lived in London for 25 years, currently residing in south east London with my girlfriend, step daughter and two cats.

I started doing walking tours about 16 years ago after I was asked to leave a job due to a ‘lack of interest and enthusiasm’. I really disliked both London and history, so applying to become a tour guide seemed an obvious next step. I had to learn a lot of info myself and absolutely loved exploring and the more I learned about London, the more I enjoyed living here.

If I have to study something or do something in an official capacity, I have little or no interest in it, but if I can do it on my own terms, then brilliant. I would call myself a ‘curistorian’ (which doesn’t exist as a word …yet) rather than a historian. The tour company I worked for folded after a year or so, so I started my own walking tours. My very first walkees (for the want of a better word) had seen a poster I put up in the window of a bike shop in Old Street. For the first 10 years, it was completely word-of-mouth.

The name of your walking tours is interesting. What gave you the idea?

A lot of walking tour companies in London have the words ‘London’ and ‘Walking Tour’ in them, so I wanted to do something a bit different. Although obviously not a Londoner (or Cockney) I turned to Cockney Rhyming Slang. With a lot of rhyming slang words, there are variations. The most widely known or oldest one for ‘walk’ is ‘Ball of Chalk’. There’s also ‘Bowl of Chalk’ and I think ‘Penneforth of Chalk’. I preferred ‘Bowl of Chalk’ so went with that and have had Cockneys writing to me ever since to tell me it should be ‘Ball of Chalk’.

You share lots of unexpected and fun facts on your tours. How do you dig up all this good stuff?

The first is to be curious. If you’re curious and ask questions you find stuff out. The second is exploring. If you explore and are also curious then you find even more stuff out. If you are curious, explore, ask questions and have no shame, then you find even more stuff out, so on this basis I’d walk in to buildings, shops, knock on doors and ask people ‘What’s that thing on your wall?’ etc. Quite often people don’t know themselves, so it’s added to the list to find out, or sometimes, you get a great nugget of information.

Clearly, books are a great source of information. I have a huge amount of books. Amazingly, many of my books have come from people (who I didn’t know) who are aware of my interest in London and have known someone who has died, and had a similar interest in London, and also had many books that needed a new home. Therefore, I’ve been bequeathed books.

The internet is clearly a great place to find things out, but there’s also much misinformation. However, I have on occasion used Google street view to find little details on buildings or walls from the comfort of my own home.

What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned about London from walking it?

Perhaps not surprising, but it’s a multi-layered, bottomless pit of intrigue.

I see loads of walking tours around London and sometimes see people stop to listen in on them. Do you ever end up with more people at the end of a walking tour than you started with? If so, do you have a bit of a story to share here?

Very rarely. It’s happened a couple of times, but I usually tell them it’s not very good and should probably do something else. On weekends I do ‘group’ walks which can sometimes have quite a few people, but during the week I do private tours for families, couples and sometimes individuals so to the untrained eye it doesn’t look like a tour, but just a few people wandering around together, which means you don’t get people trying to join.

You like to go on walking tours when you visit other places. Talk about a busman’s holiday! What’s the best walking tour you’ve ever been on as a tourist?

A number of years ago, me and my dad went to Rome for a few days and I found a wonderful guide called Silvia who runs A Friend in Rome and gave us a brilliant tour. As a ‘one man band’ it’s really nice to meet other guides in other places that I can recommend (and vice versa). Another is Mark who runs That Dam Guide in Amsterdam and next month I’m going to Germany to meet Jonny Whitlam who runs tours in Berlin. We’ve actually collaborated on a video that included both London and Berlin but have never met in real life.

Two facts I loved from your tour around St Paul’s relate to plane trees. The first is on Wood Street on the site of a medieval church, St Peter Cheap, which burned down during the Great Fire of London in 1666. Wordsworth wrote about that tree in a poem and I love how it stands out among all the tall buildings. The second is down the road on the site of an even older church, St Mary Staining, which also burned down in the Great Fire of London. It’s been there 100 years, survived WWII and is considered so important that when a new office was being built next to it a condition of the planning permission was that the tree must be given enough room and light to continue growing, so the architects designed a building that curves away from the tree. Anyway, this is a long backstory to give our readers context to my question: If you could protect one natural thing in London to prevent it from being moved, cut back or destroyed, what would it be, and why?

Ooohhhh …good question. I would feel inclined to say The Thames, but as it’s more likely to destroy us, I won’t. In London, we’re incredibly lucky with the amount of green space we have …our parks, gardens, woodlands and of course Hampstead Heath. Compared to other capitals, we’re positively spoiled for green spaces, quite a number of which started out as hunting grounds. One of my own local parks was saved from development by Octavia Hill, who became one of the founders of the National Trust in 1895, and is a wonderful resource for locals …so it’d be those green spaces.

You’ve brought loads of London facts together in your new book Why is Downing Street Painted Black? (and 364 other fun London facts). Please can you give our readers a sneak preview of one of the facts?

Well, if your readers fancy a bit of a walk, then a couple of weeks ago I teamed up with artist Ben Wilson, who features in the book. For over twenty years he’s painted tiny pictures on to bits of chewing gum that people have spat on the floor. That’s the fun fact. Ben has a website and posts pictures of his masticated art on Instagram. One of his favourite spots is the Millennium Bridge and there are so many, my step daughter calls it ’the chewing gum bridge’.

Anyway …Ben and I did a treasure hunt around London, whereby Ben painted on to gum, 5 facts (on 5 bits of gum) that relate to 5 facts from the book. I’m giving away a copy of the book to the first 10 people that can find all five. The clues to find them are on my website.

At the time of writing, 6 people have completed it. Here’s one of them, to give your readers a bit of an idea of what they look like. They’re incredibly detailed and having spent a bit of time with Ben doing this, I think one of my favourite things about it, is the sheer joy it brings to people when they discover what he’s doing. It’s an incredible gift.

What’s your walking style?

• Happy Hiker

• Reluctant Rambler

• Sunday Stroller

• Wild Weekender

I guess I need two. As a tour guide I’m leading groups, so therefore I’d be more of an Affable Ambler, but if I’m actually on a walk, then maybe Sunday Stroller would do the trick.

Headphones or head in the clouds?

It’d be neither I’m afraid …It’d be more ‘eyes fixed on the pavement’ or ‘looking up at the tops of buildings’. No headphones.

What’s the most memorable walk you’ve ever done?

Ten years ago I walked the length of the river Thames from the north sea to its source, which took me about 3 weeks. I did it on my own, and absolutely loved it. The Thames flows through 9 counties and is officially 215 miles long, although, as I picked my way through Essex (not a designated route) at the start it was far, far longer. Anyway …I wrote about that, not that anyone has read it, but not only did I learn a great deal enroute about the places I passed through, but it was great for clearing the head and knowing each day that you’ve got to get up and just walk. I could have happily just carried on.

If you could take a walk with anyone, real or fictional, alive or gone, who would it be? And why?

What a great question. I reckon, Beckie, my childhood dog. That’d be pretty cool.

One word round

• One thing you always take with you on a walk?
  Phone (unfortunately) so if it’s not a phone, it’d be a chicken breast (wrapped in foil)

• One word to describe London?
  Big

• One word to describe how you feel about leading walking tours?
  Nervous

Last question: please can you share a London-inspired writing prompt for our readers?

You’re in central London in anytime period, past, present or future. Choose your favourite …could be Roman, Elizabethan, Georgian, 1940s. Step out of the door. What can you smell? What can you hear? What can see?

Blimey, those are fab answers! Thanks for chatting with me, Jonnie.

If you want to find out more about Jonnie Fielding, you can find his walks on his website, Bowl of Chalk, discover the London facts he shares by following him on Instagram and TikTok or buy his book. And there’s still time to get involved in his treasure hunt for a chance to win a copy of the book by following the clues he and Ben Wilson have popped around London.

Thanks for reading – I’m off now to drop ‘curistorian’ into as many conversations as I can. Happy walking and writing until next time.

Sarah

More from The Writer’s Walk

If you enjoyed this interview, try the edition on Walking with a tour guide.

Hello walkers and writers 👋🏻

I thought about this edition for a long time before writing it. Then after I wrote the first second third fourth draft, I debated whether to share it with you. It’s a bit more personal than my usual editions because it reflects my often conflicted feelings about what ‘home’ means to me.

Then I read this post, from Olivia Sprinkel’s wonderful Substack To Hear the Trees Speak. where she reflects on place and offers this prompt:

What does being in place mean to you?

How are you part of the place where you live?

What does the place give you – and what can you give to it? (Perhaps questions to ponder on a walk or sitting outside.)

I’ve revisited those questions a lot over the summer and they’ve helped me make a big decision…

Walking

I’m leaving London and returning to East Yorkshire.

It’s an odd sort of return. I’ve lived more years away from the region where I grew up than I did when I lived there. I’ve also felt conflicted about returning. When I left Hull in my early twenties it was, in part, an escape from things that were making me deeply unhappy. But I also left because I was being pulled towards adventure. I was curious about the world and wanted to take a big old bite out of it.

This sense of adventure was encouraged. My mum always said that the world began at the edges of Hull and that I should make my way past the city lines to see what was out there. It was advice that I took to heart and which has made all the difference in my life – and all the wiggly paths that have led me to new places, new friendships and new ideas.

The idea of returning to East Yorkshire felt like I might be betraying my mum’s encouragement to leave. It also goes against the common wisdom that we should look forward and never back. So in the last few years, wherever my feet took me around the UK – and beyond – I’ve asked myself ‘Could this be the next stop?’ But none of the places I went to felt right. At the same time I was returning to Yorkshire more and more and discovering new things. And many of my friends had returned and were encouraging me to do the same.

But I felt conflicted. 25 years away from East Yorkshire meant that it no longer felt like home and I wasn’t sure it could ever feel like home again. So I thought about Olivia’s prompts on place, particularly, “How are you part of the place where you live?” and I realised I was feeling less and less a part of London. I felt simultaneously rooted and landless. So I thought about all the places where I’ve lived and reflected on how long it took me to feel at home in them – and the things I’d done to help me feel at home both consciously and unconsciously. And I asked myself:

• Is home a connection with people or place?

• How long does it take to feel at home in a new place?

• Is it possible to walk yourself into love with a place?

So I started walking…

Sometimes I walked alone. Sometimes in a group. Sometimes with a dog. And sometimes I walked with someone who was new to Yorkshire and couldn’t see its charms until we discovered them together through our walks and talks.

Sometimes I went on walks that I found in online guides to East Yorkshire, or ones that friends recommended. And sometimes I simply followed my heart and let my feet do the same.

I went in search of the blue, with coastal explorations that spanned sandy beaches, rocky coves and busy harbours that helped me reconnect with childhood trips to the seaside.

I went to the village of Rudston in search of the tallest monolith in the UK and discovered the grave of local author Winifred Holtby in the churchyard behind it.

I joined a beach clean-up at Spurn National Nature Reserve, which helped me feel a greater sense of connection to the land and a desire to do to my part in protecting it.

I went on a word walk and found the poetry benches along the Yorkshire Wolds Way.

The benches along the Yorkshire Wolds Way were created by Angus Ross and are carved with verses of John Wedgwood Clarke’s poem, Wander, using typography designed by Adrian Riley. The first lines of the verse carved on the Huggate bench resonated with me in particular:

We have rippled the earth with our desire to be

here not there. We have driven the dale’s wedge of hush home

between us. But you move, as we moved, in the ghost of water:

a hare rips away from the dead, thuds

down the dyke and out into everywhere the grasses foam.

Huggate, from Wander by John Wedgwood Clarke

I found follies in the forest and a lovers’ leap in Hackfall Wood. I found a forgotten corner of Hull where nature had found her way, with an unexpected delight of wildflowers that showed me that the city I had once viewed as grey was also filled with pops of colour.

I found tumbledown buildings with stories to tell.

And I went for a walk in Millington Wood where a chance encounter with an East Riding Council Countryside Officer and someone from the Ramblers made me see how much I need to get away from the city. And where I sat on the bench that overlooks the wood and realised I wanted to move to this part of Yorkshire. And where I felt inspired to create Words in the Wolds, a map of the walk I’d done, paired with a writing prompt, which I’ve shared on the Go Jauntly app. (Delighted to share that they featured it as their walk of the week, too.)

Finally, I wandered around Beverley town, the Westwood and along the Beck because soon they’ll be my local walks and I’ll get to explore them more and more once I live there.

And with every step on these walks I found myself awestruck. And with every step I felt more at home. And with every step I walked my way into love with the landscape I once ran away from.

Moving to a new place might bring an understandable sense of trepidation. But it can also spark curiosity. Street signs become puzzles to unpack, paths become mysteries to explore and snippets of conversations overheard in passing contain stories yet to be unfolded.

Perhaps, with the help of these musings, if you ever find yourself needing to connect with a new landscape, or reconnect with one you left behind, you might get there a little faster than it’s taken me. So this time, I invite you to walk in a new place and find a way to love it. Rather than walking in fear, contempt or ambivalence, open your heart to its possibilities. What stories might it hold? What opportunities might it offer? What love might it share?

Writing

Your writing prompt this time is a sentence starter (also called a sentence stem) to help you reflect on home. For anyone new to this way into writing, it’s based on using a word, phrase or a sentence that you follow like a thread to see where it takes you. Here’s one to try:

Home, to me, is…

Thanks for reading this edition. I love to hear your reflections on walking and writing, so please leave a comment.

Leave a comment

Happy walking, writing and falling in love with a landscape until next time.

Sarah

Coming up on The Writer’s Walk

I recently chatted with a London tour guide who told me they used to really dislike London and history, so applying to become a tour guide seemed an obvious next step. The more they learned about London, the more they enjoyed living there. So I guess I’m not the only person whose wanderings have helped them to fall in love with a place. I’ll be sharing our chat with you soon.

More from The Writer’s Walk

If you enjoyed this edition, check out Walking to create a sense of place, which looks at how to bring places to life in your fiction writing by following in Charles Dickens’ footsteps.

Hello walkers and writers 👋🏻

And hello to everyone who subscribed recently. I think many of you found your way here thanks to Rob Walker who writes the brilliant Art of Noticing Substack – and who shared one of my workshop icebreakers in his recent newsletter. I’m also a big fan of his book and really recommend it if you haven’t dipped into it yet.

As there are so many new people here, and because I’ve been thinking about this for a while, I want to share a little bit about the things that influenced my decision to start a newsletter that pairs walking with writing, and some of the things I believe in that informs a lot about who I am and what makes me tick. So this edition is slightly different from the usual ones where I pair a writing prompt with a walking theme – although there’s a prompt at the end, as always.

Walking my way into a newsletter

When I launched The Writer’s Walk in May 2022 I did it for two reasons.

Firstly, to rediscover my own voice – both in writing and in real life. As a commercial writer, working with brands both little and large, I’m a ghost. Working quietly behind the scenes, I’ve put words into the hands – and mouths – of many people and brands. But they’re always their words and always in their voice. And I think that’s how it should be. A tech, finance, charity, retail or outdoor brand shouldn’t sound like me. And I shouldn’t sound like them either.

But it also meant that I gradually wrote more for – and as – other people than I did for myself. I was putting all my thinking power and creative energy into service for others. I wanted to write as me again, so I thought a lot about what I wanted to say. I considered putting out a newsletter about brand writing and tone of voice, but I felt, and still do, that there are heaps of talented copywriters who already do that. I didn’t feel as if I had anything different to add to that conversation and realised I needed to find something else to write about. Something that felt more personal, more me. Something that I thought about a lot and not only had opinions on, but was interested in enough to explore further to see what else I might discover. Because, as countless famous writers have said, I write to figure out what I think.

So the second reason for starting The Writer’s Walk was to explore, and to a certain extent interrogate, my relationship with walking. And it’s been a funny one, because I’m not what you might consider to be a natural hiker. I was born with club feet, and temperamental achilles tendons, and spent the best part of my childhood limping in pain. Shoes were always too heavy and socks felt like they’d give me blisters. Clearly, a life on the trails was not for me.

But my feet gradually got stronger, the pain disappeared, and by the time I was in my mid-twenties walking was something I took for granted. Sure, I enjoyed a country stroll or coastal ramble as much as anyone, but I never thought walking defined me until the pandemic when we were limited to 30-minutes of outdoor exercise a day. Having my ability to walk cut back like that helped me realise how important it was to me and that it was more than a way of getting from A to B – it linked to so many areas of my life. Walking helped keep me fit, calm my mind and feed my soul. And, importantly for me both professionally and personally, to spark my writing.

I realised that the walks to client offices helped me mentally prepare for meetings and the walks back helped me plan the writing I’d do for them. A walk in my local park could calm my mind if I was feeling anxious or stressed. A walk around the block could help me if I was feeling stuck with my writing. And whatever type of walk I was doing, I’d find myself reflecting on life, the world and what it all means, and the ideas would flood in.

So I decided to lean into it and see if I could test it. Instead of taking a walk and hoping an idea would appear out of nowhere, I asked myself what would happen if I focused my attention on something while I walked. Could I ‘encourage’ the creativity to happen? How far would I need to walk before it happened? And did things like the weather, my mood, my pace, the terrain or time of day make a difference? And I found that they did and wondered if anyone else might find the same. I then spent absolutely ages thinking about how to share what I was learning with others before settling on the format I have now, where I share an approach to taking a walk – our theme – and pair it with a simple writing prompt. The themes span a range of topics, from walking alone, with others or with a dog, to discovering new places or rediscovering ones you know well.

The Writer’s Walk has connected me with many people who have a love of walking, writing or a mix of both. Many of you have shared your walking and writing experiences by commenting on these posts or messaging me directly – which I always look forward to getting. And I’ve been able to share other people’s walking and writing stories through the Q&A interview series – and I’m hugely grateful for how generous people are with both their time and the stories they trust me with.

The Writer’s Warmth

Over the last few years many people have asked me about the central ideas behind The Writer’s Walk. And I’ve taken a lot of time to think about them because it’s hard to apply a critical lens to an endeavour that’s so personal. What was I offering to other people with this? Was there some kind of principle, value or ‘writer’s code’ at play? So I thought a lot about when I co-owned and ran a scuba diving school in the Caribbean. Our dive shop was small, but we had 3 simple principles (dare I say ‘values’) that steered everything:

• Fun

• Safety

• Environment

These principles were a solid foundation for a dive shop. For any new service we tried, it had to encompass all of them. If something satisfied just one principle it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t fun if it also damaged the marine environment. It wasn’t enough to be just mindful of the environment if it wasn’t also safe.

Now that I offer in-person ‘walkshops’ in addition to the writing, storytelling and tone of voice workshops I facilitate for my brand clients, I’ve revisited those principles. Do I still believe in them, or has my thinking shifted? The answer is that I do still believe in them, and they’re often there in the back of my mind, but they don’t quite fit with what I’m creating with The Writer’s Walk. They’ve evolved, somewhat.

I also don’t like the idea of calling them values or principles. So many brands talk about values, but many don’t really live them. Or at least, not all of them. So I started to form a new approach and rather than call them values or principles, I realised the word that came up again and again for me was philosophy.

So here it is. The Writer’s Walk philosophy in its current shape and form. I say current, because I believe the point of having a philosophy – from the Greek words philo (love) and sophia (knowledge, wisdom) – is having the wisdom to continually test, question and evolve it.

I could share a bit more detail for each point, but for now I’m going to keep it short and simple, as I think these four lines sum things up nicely. Perhaps something here resonates with you, if so please let me know.

Writing

Thanks for reading along with me this far. At the start of this edition, I promised you a writing prompt, so this time I invite you to reflect on your own walking or writing experience. Do you have a personal approach or philosophy? If you could choose 3 words to describe how you feel about walking, what would they be? And what 3 words would you choose to describe how writing makes you feel?

As always, I welcome your thoughts and love hearing about your walks and writing. So please feel free to share something with me and our readers by leaving a comment.

Leave a comment

Happy walking and writing until next time.

Sarah

More from The Writer’s Walk

If you enjoyed this edition, check out the first one I shared, Walking to write.

Hello walkers and writers 👋

There are some people in life who sweep you away with their enthusiasm and joy from the moment you meet them. Emily Ash Powell is one of those people. We met almost ten years ago at a #CopywritersUnite night in London, organised by the fabulous Vikki Ross, and immediately bonded over words, wine and a love of doggos.

Since then, I’ve seen Em go from strength to strength, writing her way up the ladder from junior creative roles to becoming the global head of creative and copy for brands like Tony’s Chocolonely and Bumble. Along the way, she’s drop-kicked the barriers in her path and used her power with words to talk openly about issues that many people might be afraid to approach – all while sending a blast of positivity and joy out into the world along the way.

We’ve chatted about doing something together for ages, so we finally got together for a waddle along the Regent’s canal in London where we talked about being working class but hiding our accents to fit in, overcoming career hurdles, and – the most important topic of all, so maybe I should have just led with it: crisps.

We’ve loved putting this interview together for you and hope you enjoy it.

Hiya Em, lovely to catch up with you. We’ve known each other for yonks, so for the benefit of our readers, please introduce yourself

Hiya. My name’s Emily (though most people call me Em, unless I’m in trouble) and I’m a Welsh writer. I’m currently Global Head of Copy & Editorial at Bumble by day, and a writer for other brands, publications and my Substack, Hurdling, by night and other corners of the day. I live in North London with my husband, who is my favourite person ever.

My writing career started at the age of 7, when I had a poem published in the Donkey Sanctuary magazine. This is when I peaked. After that, I found myself only really caring about the subjects in school that revolved around writing, music, language and using my imagination. That led to a degree in English Literature, Language & Creative Writing at Swansea University, which led to an existential crisis about how on earth I was going to find a job that would let me move to London and do the things I was good at (and most importantly, interested in) while still having fun.

After what felt like hundreds of applications and rejections later, I finally had a call from a recruiter about a Social Media Editor role. It was an early stage subscription startup that made and sold personalised dog food on the internet called tails.com. Somehow, with no experience and only enthusiasm, I got the job. At that role, I spent two years inhaling everything I could possibly learn and try in the world of brand, marketing and creative. In addition to running the social media channels, writing articles and creating content, I started writing all the words for the website, emails, inbox comms and packaging, and discovered that this was called ‘copywriting’.

Once I had a little taste of this life as a ‘real’ writer, it was all I wanted. I spent the very little money I had (£21k a year with £900 rent for a room in London doesn’t leave much spare change in your pocket) on workshops and courses and events, and threw myself into the creative world, figuring out how I could actually convince my boss (the Chief Marketing Officer) to let me leave social media behind and become a full-time word merchant in the creative team. I met Vikki Ross after her D&AD workshop on copy and tone of voice and stayed behind to help her clear up the pizza boxes (only the best writing workshops have pizza, you see). I introduced myself and explained my situation and asked if she mentored any writers and she said that she did, but that she was fully booked at the moment. Slightly dejected, but nevertheless persistent, I asked if we could swap emails and if she could email me if a slot ever freed up.

For some reason, Vikki decided to make space and time and energy for me, and over the course of a few hour-long sessions, she helped me form a plan to convince my boss to let me formalise the fact that I was writing all the copy for the brand, and add ‘Copywriter’ into my title. I pitched the role, like we’d practiced, and was met with a simple, ‘What makes you think you’re a writer?’ I was speechless. I was 23 and couldn’t understand why one minute she’d be praising all my words, asking me to write more, then the next hitting me with this? Now that I’m older, I have a few more theories as to why.

I left that meeting in tears and replied to Vikki’s ‘How did it go?’ message with a spluttering phone call. She asked me what I wanted more, to work at the startup that I so dearly loved, or to become a writer? I chose the latter, pulled together a portfolio, applied for every copywriter job I could see on LinkedIn and eventually accepted one as European Copywriter for a fintech company. Finally, I was a writer and no one could tell me I wasn’t. I’ve been writing ever since.

Blimey, that’s a lot of hurdles to get over. Is that what eventually led you to launching Hurdling, your Substack about how we get over the things that stand in our way?

I started Hurdling back in 2022 because I got so fed up of reading people’s ‘success’ stories, where they only really talked about what happened after they cleared their hurdles – glossing over all the blood, sweat and tears that actually got them over it in the first place. I remember seeing someone online tell their story of having such bad burnout that they took a year off work, then re-emerged having written a memoir, which got published and immediately hit the charts. But I wanted to know how exactly they did that? How did they afford to do that? What were all the practical hoops they had to jump through? Like, literally how did you do that?

I wanted to create a space where I could take a good look at (and even celebrate) the hurdles that so many of us face in all the corners of our lives. I wanted to ask questions and find answers – not just for me, but for others, too. I wanted to interview people from all walks of life (not just all the regular famous guests who do all the podcast rounds) and show that every single person has a story and everyone is interesting if you’re interested enough in finding out why.

Now, it’s a place to peek behind the scenes of the highlights reels we all produce for our lives. It’s somewhere where I can reflect on the messy bits, the things gone wrong, the lessons we have to learn and to share real stories, honest thoughts and unfiltered reflections from myself, and other brilliant people, too. Some of my favourite interviews include Simon Thompson, a Botanical Horticulturist at Kew Gardens, Lo Constantinou, the founder of the CV writing agency, Good Copyand Dave Buonaguidi, the artist and printmaker (who you probably know better as Real Hackney Dave). They’re all so wildly different, and that’s the whole point. Everyone is interesting if you’re interested.

Has anything unexpected happened for you as a result of writing Hurdling?

It’s made me feel a lot more confident in writing in my own voice. When you’re the voice behind the brand, it’s pretty daunting to hold your hand up and say in a tiny voice, ‘Hi I actually have my own voice and I have something I’d like to say!’ But if you know me, you’ll know that I pretty much always have something (too much, usually) to say. It just took me a long time to pluck up the courage to publish it myself.

That knock from the CMO I told you about earlier impacted my confidence for a very long time. But somewhere along the way, it turned into fuel to say, ‘What makes me think I’m a writer? I’ll show you right now.’ I’d started pitching articles to magazines and publications, and used holiday days to take time off work to do an unpaid internship at the Sunday Times Style, so that I could find out how it all actually worked, and what editors wanted from writers. I got a few bylines at Stylistfor reviewing books (though this was unpaid, btw!) and that led to a commission from Refinery29 and then more from HuffPost, Cosmopolitan, Metro, the i Paper and a few others, too.

But for every piece published, there’s probably 50 rejected (or unanswered) pitches. Hurdling has allowed me to have somewhere to write these things anyway, and somewhere to continuously figure out my own writing style.

Someone recently left a comment on one of my pieces that said, ‘Everything you write is so you.’ Until I read that, I don’t think I’d realised just how much it mattered to me that I could show up as myself and not only just be tolerated for it, but appreciated for it. Having spent a lot of my life being made to feel like I’m too loud, too talkative and too much, I don’t think there could be a bigger compliment. Hurdling has given me a tiny (orange) space to really feel like myself again.

You’re from Wales and now live in London – and as someone from Yorkshire who came to London I know how the cultural and class differences can feel overwhelming. Have you ever felt imposter syndrome or found yourself changing things about yourself to try and fit in? Like how you present yourself through your voice, accent and identity?

Oh my god, yes. This is something I’ve wrangled with from the moment I landed in London, and I recently wrote about losing (and re-finding) my accent. It is all so overwhelming and so confusing. I can remember being at work drinks, and a guy from the marketing team asked me which school I’d gone to. I’d excitedly replied with, ‘Archbishop McGrath School in Bridgend! Why, do you know it?!’, not understanding that what he was actually asking was whether I’d been to one of the well-known private schools in England. Needless to say, he had not heard of my school.

After a while, I began to realise there was this secret language of privilege and access that was spoken in startups, advertising agencies and tech companies – but it was never really spoken in a Welsh accent. I’d get comments about my Welsh accent all the time, would smile through the usual jokes that implied that Welsh people were all stupid, and accepted that being ‘exposed’ as Welsh was essentially an admission that I was not really supposed to be in the places I’d worked really fucking hard to be in, and somewhere along the way, I gradually heard my accent slip away. Now, it makes my heart ache when people tell me I ‘don’t really sound that Welsh anymore’.

But when I moved from London to Amsterdam (for just under a year for a maternity contract as Head of Creative at Tony’s Chocolonely), all of that changed. My husband and I upped and left our life in London (prompted by some pretty horrendous bullying and emotional abuse from his parents, who are no longer part of our life) and we sought to unravel all the things that made us feel like we couldn’t show up as ourselves.

I picked up the pieces of my shattered confidence, and unravelled a significant amount of tangled opinions about myself that had never belonged to me in the first place. I stopped doing the things I thought I should be doing. I started doing the things I wanted to be doing. And over time, I heard my accent start to come back.

It was like a fresh start with a blank canvas of a city on which to re-paint ourselves again, and I found that with a community of expats and without such an obvious privilege and class divide, my accent came back and I was able to my Welshness more than I’d ever felt able to in London. When we came back, I was determined to never let anyone make me feel like I needed to lose it again.

How did all of that make you feel?

I felt so sad and angry that I’d ever let anyone make me feel like I wasn’t enough! Enough for who? For someone who I didn’t care about anyway? I’ve now learned instead to try to be enough for me and for the people I care about. It takes a lot to unlearn the people-pleasing tendencies, and don’t get me wrong, I still spend the majority of my days wracked with self-doubt. But I am now so much sure of who I am, how I show up and what I can bring to rooms, people and my work.

As I’m sure you’ll know too, when you have an accent that’s not like everyone else’s in the rooms you’re in, you do draw attention to yourself. And it’s not always for the right reasons – people will always make the joke and do the impressions. But I don’t want to stand out for being the only Welsh person in the room. I want to stand out for being good at what I do. For being good at what I do, as well as being Welsh, instead of for being good at what I do, in spite of being Welsh. I used to feel it was the latter, but I’m determined to prove that it’s really not.

As a writer, your job is to help brands bring their voices to life. Do you think the chameleon effect – the tendency to mimic or mirror another person's facial expressions, nonverbal behaviours and verbal expressions – has given you an advantage?

I have never thought about it in that way before, but absolutely. I give different accents and speech rhythms to different brand voices and I read my copy out loud in those accents (my colleagues are very grateful for remote working, I’m sure). I always say that being a copywriter is like being an actor – you’re taking on a character, all their personality traits and their big worlds of language.

I think you’re right – the chameleon effect is definitely an advantage, but I would say that empathy is too. I am a huge overthinker and very curious and interested about other people and what they do and why they do it. I think writing for brands is ultimately about understanding what makes people tick, and speaking directly to them in the way that makes them feel understood.

You’ve written for lots of amazing brands, but I know that writing for Skin + Me was a turning point. How did that come about?

Thank you, I feel so fortunate to have had the experiences I’ve had. With Skin + Me, I’d been invited to a focus group of women in their 20s by an ex-colleague from tails.com. A lot of the brains behind tails.com had also been behind graze.com and Innocent Drinks, and Skin + Me was to be the new brand on the block revolutionising another industry via subscription. At this point, there was no factory, no brand, no product and no name. So I went to the office in Soho to share insights on how I, a young woman who represented the target market, shopped skincare and felt about my skin.

After the session, I noticed a whiteboard on the wall of the office with a list of roles to hire. On that list was ‘Copyrighter’. On my way out, I grabbed a pen, circled the mis-spelled word and wrote ‘call me’ with my name, number and email underneath. They did and I pitched myself for the interview and got the job.

For the next few months, I had the job of a lifetime where I got to create a brand personality from scratch and create a tone of voice that truly spoke to our audience. It won a Women in Marketing Award a year or so later and it is still probably the piece of work I’m the most proud of. Not because of the award, but because of the emails we got from customers who said, ‘I finally feel seen’ because of the writing across the signup flow, packaging and emails.

From there, it sort of got me known as ‘the subscription startup writer’ and it led me to projects with Lick, Freddie’s Flowers and more. I don’t know that I’ll ever get another experience like that again, but it really was one of the best opportunities I’ve had as a brand writer.

You’ve done a few side gigs and I love the ‘I Want To Eat Crisps With You’ print that you created with artist, Dave Buonaguidi. How did that come to life?

Ah, my pride and joy! I’d been a huge fan of Dave Buonaguidi’s work for a long time – good words written, fun moments captured and big, bold statements. I met him the Affordable Art Fair back in 2021 and I bought his ‘Party Like It’s 1999’ print (and I got to put the glitter on myself). He had an ‘I Want To Eat Biscuits With You’ print for sale and I said ‘Dave, everyone knows that crisps are far more superior than biscuits’ and he said ‘Fuck! I love crisps too!’ and I said ‘Can we do a ‘I Want To Eat Crisps With You’ one?’ and he said ‘Yeah!’

We turned them into different colours; red for ready salted, blue for cheese & onion, green for salt & vinegar and pink for prawn cocktail. All of them are on my kitchen wall and a few of my nearest and dearest friends have some copies too. It’s always fun to see your words in print, but even better to see them on a wall.

Let’s settle this debate: Crisps in sandwiches – yes or no?

Absolutely yes, but there are many conditions and caveats. At my wedding, we made little brown bags of crisp sandwich ingredients for everyone. In the bag was a bread roll, a small square of Welsh butter, a knife and a bag of crisps. I’d done this big Tesco order with pretty much at least one of every crisp available. But not all crisps are created equally as suitable for a sandwich. I felt sorry for those who had Wotsit sandwiches. Basically anything that’s got a maize base instead of a potato is wrong and doesn’t belong in the crisp sandwich. Walkers or Tayto are always the best.

For me, the ultimate crisp sandwich is made of:

• 1 bag of Cheese & Onion Walkers crisps

• 2 slices of Hovis Best of Both bread

• Too much Lurpak butter

• A handprint from where you’ve squished the bread with your hand, making sure all those crisps crumble into the smallest possible pieces

It also has to be cut into triangles, like a meal deal sandwich. This gives you more filling. I don’t know how this is true but it is.

What’s your walking style?

• Happy Hiker

• Reluctant Rambler

• Sunday Stroller

• Wild Weekender

Sarah, I know you are the queen of walking so please don’t hate me but I am absolutely a Reluctant Rambler.1 I find it really hard to do things (tasks, activities, work) that feel like they don’t have an objective or a purpose. I find it so hard to convince myself that the purpose of a walk is simply… to walk. I also tend to go everywhere on my bike, which puts me in the wheels, not heels club.

That said, once I’m actually over the hurdle of getting out of the house to go for the walk that I know will get me out of my own head, give me a dose of creativity or refresh my tired brain, I would probably say that I am a Wide-Eyed Waddler. I am basically a Welsh Corgi, waddling about on my short legs and gazing at everything around me with my mouth open, smiling at everyone I pass and peeking through windows and inventing backstories for the people who live in the living rooms I can see.

Headphones or head in the clouds?

If I need clarity, my head is in the clouds (and I am in my own head). If I need a reset or to get out of a funk, it’s music. If I need to be inspired or distracted, it’s a podcast. If I’m walking home alone at night and it feels a bit sketchy (hello, being a woman), I’ll have headphones in but nothing playing, though I do have this huge delusion that no one is going to murder me while I’m listening to Fearless by Taylor Swift. Like imagine being murdered while that song is playing in your ears? That would be ridiculous and embarrassing for the murderer.

My husband and I are obsessed with The Rest Is History podcast. The Titanic is my Roman Empire (as a child, I used to stand over the bannister of the staircase at my mum’s house and drop a necklace over the side like Rose does in the film, LOL) and I just loved the episodes where they brought to life all the stories and backgrounds of the passengers who weren’t famous or ‘of note’, and dive into their backgrounds and realities. It was fascinating. My other favourite podcast is Sentimental Garbage, with the author Caroline O’Donoghue, where she looks at the culture we love that society can sometimes make us feel ashamed of. It’s just gorgeous and funny and silly and wonderful.

Tell me about the most memorable walk you’ve ever done

My most memorable walk was on Wiseman’s Bridge beach in Pembrokeshire. It was New Year’s Eve, it was raining and my poor husband had to spend the entire morning trying to convince me to go for a walk with him (I told you I was a Reluctant Rambler). When we finally got to the beach, the tide was in so he suggested we go to the pub instead, then walk after. We sat at that pub for hours drinking pints and eating crisps until the tide was finally back out far enough to walk across the sand, across the bay to Saundersfoot. Not too far into the walk, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. On the sand, in the rain, full of crisps. Everyone says their wedding day is the best day of their life but this one was mine.

If you could take a walk with anyone, real or fictional, alive or gone, who would it be? And why?

I would always take a walk with my grandparents. I’m very lucky to be 31 and to have all four grandparents still with me. I love spending time with them and hearing all their stories (no matter how many times I’ve heard them before) and asking them more questions about their lives, decisions and opinions on the world. They always have the answers, and the ability to help me figure out my own, too.

One word round

• One thing you always take with you on a walk? Hula Hoops.

• One word to describe how you feel about writing? Painstaking (emphasis on the ‘pain’).

• One flavour of crisps you can’t live without? Salt & Vinegar (specifically, the Sea Salt & Chardonnay Vinegar from the Co-Op).

Last question: please can you share a walking-inspired writing prompt for our readers?

Describe everything about a walk, from the point of view of the insole in your left shoe.

Em, that has to be the most specific, most niche writing prompt we’ve had so far on The Writer’s Walk. I love it! Thanks for walking with me and for being so generous with your answers to all my questions.

You can learn more about Em and her work on her website and follow her on Instagram. And you should definitely subscribe to her Substack, Hurdling:

Subscribe to Hurdling

I’ll leave you with this final thought from Em on copywriting, which is also a pretty good way to approach life:

Happy walking and writing until next time.

Sarah

Hello walkers and writers 👋🏻

The Writer’s Walk continues to introduce me to incredible people and I love that it enables me to share some of their stories and adventures with you. Most recently, I chatted with Rebecca Dawson – an amazing woman who wears lots of hats. She’s the owner of plus size outdoor gear store Vampire Outdoors, a former Chair of Trustees for the Ramblers and co-founder of Every Body Outdoors, a community action group fighting for clothing, gear and representation for plus size bodies in the outdoor movement. Please check it out if you haven’t seen it yet.

And now on to this edition on walking with a guide.

Walking

I’ve lived just off east London’s Brick Lane for 15 years (it’s the longest I’ve lived in one place in my entire life) and I know the streets so well I could probably walk them in my sleep. Or so I thought. It turns out that there are alleys I’d never stepped foot in, gardens I didn’t know existed, streets that had somehow slipped me by and stories that I thought I knew but have more to them than I realised. In recent weeks I’ve had my eyes and mind opened wider thanks to the people who’ve guided me around a neighbourhood that I thought I knew better than anywhere else in the world.

If I hadn’t joined a ‘netwalk’ led by Hana Sutch (Go Jauntly) and Daniel Raven-Ellison (Slow Ways/National Park Cities), I wouldn’t have learned that the oldest living Londoner is a tree or that there’s almost as many trees in London as there are people. And I wouldn’t have discovered a hidden park behind Spitalfields Market – which I’d never set foot in before despite walking past it thousands of times:

And if we hadn’t stopped to look at (one of my favourite) pieces of street art on Princelet Street, I wouldn’t have spotted the words on the road in front of it, which another person in the group pointed out. (To be fair, despite the double yellow lines, there’s often a car parked in the spot where the words are, which might explain why I missed it!)

If I hadn’t joined The Gentle Author’s Tour of Spitalfields, I wouldn’t have learned that the area around Spitalfields Market was once a Roman cemetery with tombs that lined what is now Bishopsgate, or that when you walk through the corporate plaza, Bishops Square, you’re walking on the bones of the dead, as more than 18,000 human remains were removed from the site when it was redeveloped.

And if The Gentle Author’s1 story about Brick Lane’s history of migration hadn’t continued, I wouldn’t have learned that the word ‘refugee’ was brought to Brick Lane by the Huguenots. Its origin is the French word ‘réfugié’ which specifically refers to the Protestants who fled France following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.

Going beyond Brick Lane, I’ve discovered other corners of the city, and their stories, by walking with guides. If I hadn’t joined Jonnie Fielding, who runs Bowl of Chalk, on a wander around St Paul’s I wouldn’t have learned about this magnificent tree. The Cheapside plane is one of the Great Trees of London and is a rare piece of greenery within the otherwise grey of the Square Mile. It’s survived bombs, fires and, amazingly for an area where buildings outpace the trees in both number and height, the eager grasp of developers.

And if I hadn’t had the chance to go on a walking tour with a street artist a few years ago, I’d have probably missed the work of Ben Wilson – known as the Chewing Gum Man. Ben turns discarded chewing gum into miniature works of art – a painstaking endeavour, which takes hours of work and involves heating the gum with a blow torch, before painting it and sealing with lacquer.

Tip: head to the Millennium Bridge and look down and you’ll see dozens of Ben’s artworks beneath your feet.

If I hadn’t joined Frank Molloy on one of his walks, I wouldn’t have known that London’s ‘lost’ River Fleet rushes the city and you can hear it beneath this unassuming grate in the pavement at the corner of Back Hill, Warner Street and Ray Street. It’s surprisingly loud, too!

And if I hadn’t signed up to a photography tour of one of my favourite places in London, the Barbican, I wouldn’t have started to look at things from different angles…

… or found different ways of framing what I see around me.

Which in turn helped transform my walks into exercises in noticing the world.

So my invitation this time is to go for a walk with a tour guide to see what you discover along the way. Here’s a few tips:

• Choose a walk with a theme that interests you, like art, history, architecture, photography, nature, and so on

• Smaller groups are better (in my opinion), so ask the guide how many people they take

• Most walks go ahead whatever the weather, so be prepared for rain, shine and anything in between

• Pop to the loo before it starts – you might not get chance during the walk itself

• Bring water/a drink unless the walk includes a stop for refreshments

• Look out for walking tours at festivals or conferences

• Look for tours close to home – you never know what you’ll discover on your doorstep when you explore it through someone else’s eyes (and stories!)

• Don’t let the potential cost put you off – many people and organisations offer free guided walks

• Get there early – most tours start promptly and guides usually can’t wait for latecomers

• Ask questions, chat with other walkers and have fun

Writing

We have a super simple writing prompt this time:

• What was the most enlightening thing that you learned from your tour guide?

As always, I love hearing about your walks, so please share what you find in the comments.

Leave a comment

Happy walking and writing until next time.

Sarah

More from The Writer’s Walk

If you enjoyed this edition, check out Walking to find treasure, the edition on geocaching – an activity that often includes a self-guided ’tour’ of an area where the caches are hidden, together with details of its history and stories.

That’s just one of the challenges Rebecca Dawson has had to overcome in order to enjoy outdoor activities like trail hiking and wild camping. And it’s these barriers to access that motivated her to do something to change the story for tens of thousands of other people.

Rebecca and I met at a CampWild community campout. Over a campfire chat and some paddle boarding I discovered that she’s the owner of plus size outdoor gear store Vampire Outdoors, a former Chair of Trustees for the Ramblers and co-founder of Every Body Outdoors, a community action group fighting for clothing, gear and representation for plus size bodies in the outdoor movement.

Representation matters – in all walks of life. But for people with bigger bodies there are numerous hurdles to getting into outdoor activities like hiking, climbing, cycling, paddle sports and camping. From finding gear that fits and overcoming self doubt, to experiencing stigmas like body shaming.

Rebecca’s changing all of that. Acting as a champion for people of all body sizes and challenging outdoor brands and leaders to design products and experiences that work for everyone, together with improving representation.

Having bought something from Vampire Outdoors already (hello Kula Cloth!) and having followed Every Body Outdoors and their work for a while, I was thrilled to meet someone in person who I find so inspiring through their social media. So when we saw each other at the National Outdoor Expo I asked if she’d chat with me for The Writer’s Walk – and was honoured when she said yes.

Hi Rebecca, thanks for chatting with me – please tell our readers about yourself

Thanks Sarah. My name is Rebecca Dawson. I grew up in a village in Surrey where I spent a lot of time in the countryside, and now I live in South Cambridgeshire, in a rural village, with my two lovely Burmese cats. I work for myself and run two businesses – Spadeworx, a marketing business focused on farming and agriculture, and Vampire Outdoors, an online shop that specialises in plus size outdoor gear and accessories for everyone, including some outdoor hygiene products that are specifically focused towards women. I'm also, on a voluntary basis, a director of Every Body Outdoors, a non-profit community interest company.

Have you always been a walker?

No, I haven't. I've always been outdoorsy, and loved nature, but I was a horse rider when I was a child, so I spent a lot of time outdoors, experiencing the countryside, but on horseback, not on my own two legs. And actually, I really hated walking! When I was a child, I used to moan when my family would drag us for a walk. It wasn't until my early 30s that I discovered that I actually liked walking. I went through a marriage breakup in my late 20s and suffered with depression, and as part of recovering from that my GP advised me to do some walking, but I didn't really know where to start. I was like, oh, I don't really know where to go. I knew a bit about footpaths and bridleways from when I was a rider, but I was now living in a completely different area that I hadn't really explored.

So I did a bit of walking locally, then a friend suggested I do the London MoonWalk with her and some friends – that’s an overnight marathon walk in London to raise money for breast cancer causes, and you walk in decorated bras. So that was just absolutely madness and right up my street. So I said yes, having never walked any significant distance at all, and I started training, because obviously this was a thing I needed to train for. I'd never walked 26.2 miles before. So I started training with local friends and in the evenings we'd go out for a little walk around the villages and pound the pavements overnight. I started exploring a little bit further, finding footpaths that were sort of connected together to increase my mileage. I did the MoonWalk, but it was very painful as I was injured beforehand, but I finished it.

Then another friend said, do you fancy walking the Hadrian's Wall long distance path with me, as a holiday? And I was like, I don't know what that's about, but yeah, sounds good. So again, I had no experience. I had to buy hiking boots. I had to find a backpack that was big enough. We didn't camp. We used a baggage service and carried a day bag and stayed at B&Bs. It was a good introduction, but we had to do it in a really short period of time because of our individual commitments, which meant we had to do huge mileage each day ­– 20 to 22 miles a day, which was massive. But I really enjoyed that walk. That long distance path was pivotal in creating this sort of feeling in me of being more connected to the outdoors, of really enjoying long distance walking.

I did the MoonWalk again the following year. Then I decided that if I was going to keep doing these mad challenges, it would be better if I found a walking group, so I could walk more regularly. And it took me quite a long time to find a group that I felt comfortable with. I didn't want to walk with a bunch of older people because, at that time, I was single and didn't know many people in the area, and I wanted to make new friends who were my peers. And I kind of resigned myself to having to join the Ramblers because I couldn't find another walking group. But then I found a young walkers group, with people in their 20s and 30s. That’s what propelled my walking hobby and it led to a lot of other things.

I’m guessing one of the things it led to was your role as Chair of Trustees for the Ramblers – can you tell me more?

So the Ramblers is the nation's walking charity. Not only does it have a lot of walking groups – we're up to around 600 now – around half of its work is on protecting and expanding the places where we can walk. The Ramblers is a statutory body that has to be consulted on any changes to the path network – things like getting new or improved access and maintaining paths. We have about 25,000 volunteers and just over 100,000 members. We are the voice of walkers in Great Britain, and I’m pretty passionate about it.

My involvement came about after joining the Stag Walkers group after years of looking for a group I wanted to walk with. It was a very small group and the person running it had been doing it on her own for many years and had asked people to help but no one had, so she was on the verge of closing the group. And I thought, oh my god, I have just found this group, I really don't want it to shut down. So I said to her, I know nothing about the Ramblers and nothing about walking groups, but I have a background in marketing, and if I can help keep this group going, then let's do that.

So within months of joining, I was running the group with the help of the lady who'd been there before and I ran it, effectively as Chair, for eight years. At the start, I didn't know what I was doing, so I reached out for help and got to know Paul, the Chair of a young walkers group in the Chilterns. He was really helpful and encouraged me to go to my Ramblers Area Committee, which is where all the groups from a county work together. So I went to those meetings, which no one from my group had gone to for donkey's years, and started learning more. Paul also encouraged me to go to the Annual General Meeting (AGM) as a way to learn more about the organisation. So I went as a visitor, rather than a voting member, and I was baffled by the whole thing, to be honest. But around two years later, after Paul’s encouragement, I decided to stand as a trustee because I’d learned a lot more about the Ramblers by then and had strong opinions around what younger people who love the outdoors or walking would benefit from.

And, you know, it was very bad. It was non digital at that time. And I was frustrated, as a person in my 30s who worked in marketing, and felt it was madness that we were not doing this, that and the other. So I stood as a trustee in Southampton, and was elected at the AGM in 2016 and joined the board. I’d never been a trustee before and it was a huge learning experience. I was a trustee for seven years, doing a three-year term as an ordinary trustee before being re-elected and spending nine months as Vice Chair. The current Chair, Kate Ashbrook, kept encouraging me to stand as Chair, so in the end I did, was elected, and did three years as Chair of the board.

It was a huge time of change. I led the organization through a complete strategic refresh, where we looked at our 10-year revenue strategy and appointed a new chief executive. We'd just come out of COVID then, but we were starting to realign ourselves and think about our future. And it was just the most incredible experience being a trustee of a charity like this. We had a whole digital transformation programme as well, which happened during my tenure as a trustee, and which has revolutionised the organisation – although it wasn't easy, it was really difficult.

And it's things like this you don't get to do when you're self employed, despite the fact that I've worked in-agency and in-house before, you don't get to do these sort of things unless you are sitting on the board of a company. So I got to do things that I don't get to do all the time in my professional life, but I brought all of my skills with me. Then there was skill sharing. I learned loads of skills as a trustee and Chair at the Ramblers, and I've brought them into my professional life where they also lead into the work that I do with Every Body Outdoors.

Having seven years in governance of a national charity fired up my understanding of how inaccessible the countryside and nature is for a lot of people, and how difficult it is to do the things that a lot of us take for granted. And honestly, the Ramblers, not just the time I was a trustee, but as an organisation, has totally changed my life for the better. It really, really has. I'm ever so grateful for that, which is why I will continue to support the organisation forever.

You co-founded Every Body Outdoors – can you share how you met your co-founders and why you set it up?

Yes, so I am one of five co-founders of Every Body Outdoors. It started during lockdown, when one of the other directors, Steph Wetherell, brought us all together. We were all ranting on Instagram about not being able to get outdoor clothes that fit us, all that kind of stuff, so she connected with us all individually.

I was really fired up about doing something about this anyway, but because I then became Chair of the Ramblers, I just didn't have time to do it myself, and so Steph brought us together. We started off as five angry women who wanted to make a difference to plus size people who wanted to take part in outdoor activities, be that walking, hiking, outdoor swimming, climbing, mountain biking, paddle sports, all of those kinds of outdoor sports. All of us have a particular interest and we cover a big range of activities that we really like doing. I'm obviously more on the hiking and the camping side. Kumbi Kariwo is a climber and Emily Williams is really into cycling, wild swimming and paddle sports. Sara Huws does a bit of everything – swimming, hiking. Steph is into hiking, camping, cycling and a bit of swimming.

We set it up thinking that we were just going to really be trying to influence brands to make things in bigger sizes. Like doing reviews and helping brands out with fit testing and that kind of stuff. And that's kind of what we were working towards. And we thought it'll be lovely to have group walks and stuff, and have a community. Steph had already created a closed Facebook group, which was more about the kit side of stuff, so we launched an Instagram account and within 48 hours we had 1,000 followers.

And we were like, oh, that's interesting. There's clearly more people than we thought that were also really passionate about this. So we quickly discovered that there was a big community out there and the community element of what we do – the group walks and hill skills, courses specifically for plus size people – had to happen a lot sooner than we thought it was going to, which was amazing. Now our work is very much split between our community work and our work with brands. We’ve got 26 volunteers across the UK who run walks for plus size people. We have courses on hill skills, navigation and stuff like that. We've done climbing taster events. We're going to do some mountain biking stuff. So all of these things are part of what we do now, alongside the work with brands and the advocacy piece around raising plus size voices in the outdoors.

I’m guessing that you’ve personally experienced stigma or prejudice. Could you share an experience with me, how it made you feel and what you did to overcome it?

One thing I will say, is I very much benefit from size privilege. I am the smallest of the Every Body Outdoors directors in terms of body size. When I first started I was size 16, and now size 18, and I'm still the smallest. So I definitely benefit from size privilege in that there are more things for me to buy. Maybe they don’t fit very well, and I obviously have much more choice than others with bigger bodies, but I still find it really frustrating.

Because I love long distance walking, I’ve been trying to find kit that’s as lightweight as possible. And what you find is that, as a bigger body person, you're pretty much excluded from most ultralight outdoor gear because it's made for people in small bodies. You know, sleeping bags are really skinny. They don't fit me. The really ultralight clothing isn't available in my size. From a gear point of view, I find that really, really frustrating.

In terms of prejudice and stigma, the thing I struggled with a lot was that I'm quite slow, and I find hills difficult. Even in my walking group I would often be at the back, and it would make me feel embarrassed and ashamed that I couldn't do it and I often felt left behind.

I think people don't appreciate they need to pay attention to other people in the group. We find this a lot with our community members who tell us they've been on group walks, and they find themselves being left behind or being stigmatised for being slow. And people having to wait for you, and then when you get there they don't give you a chance to get your breath back. You know, they've been stood there for five minutes and feel ready to go again, but they don't give you that opportunity. And that's frustrating and upsetting. So I've definitely experienced that.

Other things that happen on the trail is stiles being too narrow. It's still difficult to get through kissing gates and gaps and stiles. It's embarrassing, you know? It's really embarrassing. And for people who have bigger bodies than me, it's completely impossible. Sometimes I've had to climb over walls to get through a gap and it's not fun.

But I've done a lot of work on myself with therapists, and recently I have found a lot of peace with my body and with what I'm capable of. There's an element of gaslighting yourself and I'm still working on it because it's hard to stop the negative talk and telling yourself stories, which are not necessarily true. So I'd say it's an ongoing piece of work, but I definitely have felt better about myself for the past few years.

What’re the positive things to have come from your work with Every Body Outdoors and Vampire Outdoors?

The real positive is seeing a movement of people who share a passion and a desire to make the outdoors more accessible to more people, and to people who face specific barriers to access. And in the case of Every Body Outdoors and Vampire Outdoors, that is predominantly people who have bigger bodies. And it's also, not deliberately but quite predominantly, women. Although Every Body Outdoors is not biased towards gender, we have a majority of women in our community. We do have some men, and it seems that men face some slightly different challenges, as well as the gear problems that women face. But I think a lot of women who are plus size and want to get into the outdoors also face a significant confidence issue, and that's something we try to help them with – with the courses and group walks and all that stuff. It’s where they can walk in a non-judgmental space and really explore what it is they love about the outdoors without fearing being left behind or being shamed or made to feel like they're not welcome.

And that obviously crosses over into Vampire Outdoors, because in enabling people to buy the clothing that they need, and that fits them – and feels and looks great – they feel more confident, because they feel like they fit in. One of the bigger issues is that if you can't find something that fits your body, and you're making do with something and see other people in the outdoors who have got all the gear. I'm not saying you have to have all of the gear to go into the outdoors, but there becomes a point at which it is critical. Like having a decent waterproof if you're going into the hills, having a backpack that fits you and doesn't rub and cause you pain. There's a safety element when it comes to things like climbing harnesses and personal flotation devices (PFDs) for paddle sports. There’s actually a very real safety risk if you don't have the right gear. And I should say, I don't do climbing harnesses or PFDs at Vampire Outdoors, but it's one of the things I'd like to do in the future.

Being able to access gear that fits you makes it not only more accessible, but also more comfortable. And if you're more comfortable, you're more likely to enjoy it, and if you enjoy it, you're more likely to do it again. And I think that is confidence building in people who either weren't sure that it was for them, or they maybe used to do it when they were younger or in a smaller body, and then they just didn't really feel like they could do it anymore. But through the community they see other people doing it and realise that it is for them. And that, for me, is one of the most wonderful and hugely validating things.

Can you share some advice for plus size people who want to get into outdoor activities but might not know where to start?

I think the trouble is that we see people on social media doing the Wainwrights, climbing big walls and going on Epic Adventures, and while that is obviously super inspiring, it can also be overwhelming.

So the trick is to start small. If you want to start hiking start going for small walks. You don't have to go to a national park – we are blessed in this country with a myriad of footpaths, bridleways, byways and so many places where you can go for a walk in the countryside. And often you don't have to travel too far.

And if you're in a city, you might only have to go to the outer edges of it, where the greenery starts, and you'll start finding beautiful places. Finding a local walking group is good way because you haven't got to worry about navigation. You can get books with routes in them that are often well signposted and you can get routes off different apps. Start by doing an hour, see how you get on, and it will start building your confidence slowly.

The same thing applies to cycling. Road cycling can be accessible because you can literally do it from your door. There's a cost in getting a bike, but you can get second-hand bikes or go somewhere where they do bike hire and follow a set route. And remember, you don't have to cycle all of it. So if it's your first time, you might not be able to go for an hour cycling, because it might be too painful on your bum, but you could cycle some of it, and then you could push the bike for a bit. Take a backpack. Take some food. Stop multiple times. Have a snack, have a picnic. Sit down and enjoy being outdoors and don't make it all about the activity.

With paddle sports, you can hire paddle boards, canoes and kayaks and what I would say is, talk to the hire provider in advance. Tell them your weight. Telling people your weight might be quite triggering, but it's really important, because they need to be able to find the right board or the right size kayak or canoe that's going to work for your weight. And it's really important, particularly paddle boarding, as they come in different sizes. Do it somewhere safe, like on a lake, and have a little introductory lesson. There’s also some great plus size paddle boarders who post on social media and share tips. And you can make it fun by doing it with friends.

Camping is so accessible. It's fantastic. And you don't have to wild camp or backpack. You can buy a cheap tent that you can even stand up in and book a campsite and just spend one night if you're not sure if it's for you. When it comes to things like sleeping bags and mats and stuff, just buy an inflatable mat that you would use as a spare bed at home and take a duvet. If you're just going for one night on a campsite and you're going with your car, you don't need ultralight stuff. You can get away with trying stuff out. I used to camp in a big five-person tunnel tent that I could stand up in, with a big mattress and my duvet about four years ago. I wasn't into wild camping or camping in a small tent. I would only go to campsites with a massive tent with my car full of stuff. And you know what? That's perfectly valid. And I still love camping like that. You don't need to go ultra-lightweight or try and follow what other people are doing. Just go and try it out in your own way.

And what advice would you give to people who run outdoor businesses – like outdoor leaders, gear and clothing brands, campsites and so on?

My main advice would be to think outside of your own perception of what it looks like to be somebody who enjoys the outdoors. I find a lot of people who work in the outdoors are surrounded by other people who look like them – you know, pretty fit people who scale mountains or do loads of climbing or are very adventurous. Sometimes we forget that we all start somewhere, and that people who have bigger body sizes are just like us – they love the outdoors or want to spend time in nature – and that the experience of those people who have bigger bodies is as valid as the people who are in smaller bodies, have high fitness levels or who look more outdoorsy. So whether you’re a mountain leader, run a campsite, or hire equipment, look at what you’re doing and the people you're excluding.

I would say that bike hire is one of those things that excludes a lot of people because of weight limits on bikes – when you can get bikes that will take bigger and heavier people. It’s the same with wetsuits. If you’re a water sport business and hire wetsuits, you really have to think about what you offer and a lot of them do not offer plus size wetsuits. And they are available.

And for outdoor leaders, if you've got plus size people in your group, it’s about really thinking about that person's experience. Mountain leaders should already be trained to manage groups properly, but unfortunately, it doesn't always happen. And if you're joining a group walk and you're worried about it, talk to the leader in advance, because they're more than likely to be able to reassure you.

And clothing brands need to make stuff in bigger sizes. Half of the female population are a size 16 and above, and the average size of a UK woman is 18, according to data from Mys Tyler. Not only are you excluding people from the outdoors by not allowing them to get the kit that they need, you're also missing a massive trick in terms of income. You’re ignoring a huge amount of income because you refuse to see plus size people as valid customers for your brand. So make stuff in bigger sizes, please. Thanks!

What’s your walking style?

• Happy Hiker

• Reluctant Rambler

• Sunday Stroller

• Wild Weekender

I would say I'm a happy hiker. I love walking, and I find joy in just going for a walk. And it doesn't have to be a massive walk. I sometimes go for a very short walk in my village if I'm feeling really overwhelmed or I just haven't got time for a long walk. I’m also planning a week's long-distance trail in June, and those are equally happy things for me to do.

Headphones on or head in the clouds?

I never wear headphones. I'm actually deaf in one ear, so I feel really vulnerable if I cannot hear in the outdoors. And I would say my head is not in the clouds, I think it’s in the trees. I'm pretty present and I like to observe as I'm going around. So I love listening to the birds, and I love watching like the landscape change. I like listening to the sounds of nature.

What’s your most memorable walk?

That's a really difficult question to answer. There's so many. But I’ll share a walk that I felt was really profound in a few different ways for me. I did a long distance trail called the Affric Kintail Way that runs through Glen Affric into the Kintail mountains. It's a sort of valley walk, not a lot of elevation, and is 40 miles. I did it over four days with a friend, and it was my first time walking and wild camping. In fact, we wild camped for two nights, but we camped at a campsite, then we did a wild camp, then we stayed in a really, really remote youth hostel. It was the first time I'd done a long distance hike carrying everything. I’d done very little walking in Scotland and it was just the most incredible landscape. It was awe inspiring. I was quite deep into my therapy journey at the time, and really learning to reconnect with myself. That time spent in nature with a friend who was super supportive and just lovely and never, never judged me, was a really validating experience. Both the incredible landscape and the emotional journey that I went on through that landscape, and how I learned more about myself. I learned what I'm capable of. I learned what it was like to spend four days in the wilderness, because it's really, really, really remote.

If you could take a walk with anyone, real or fictional, alive or gone, who would it be?

I'm not very good with celebrities because I don't really know who they are, to be perfectly honest. But do you know what? I think I would love to go for a walk with Dolly Parton. I am a huge fan of her music, and love her altruistic approach and as a business woman, as well – she's an incredible business woman. She also fights for the things that matter without getting political, like the support she's given to healthcare, to children, to education, which I find really inspiring. I'd love to pick her brains. I'd love to just be in her presence. And I think she would love a walk. She comes from the Smoky Mountains and I think she would love to go for a walk and talk about stuff. And I'd love to do that with her.

One word round

• One thing you always take with you on a walk?
  Water

• One word to describe how walking makes you feel?
  Alive

• One word to describe how you feel about inspiring people to get outdoors?
  Proud

Thanks for chatting with me, Rebecca, and for sharing your walking story and the work you’re doing to make the outdoors accessible for more people.

If you want to follow Rebecca’s outdoor adventures check out Vampire Outdoors on Instagram, where you can also follow Every Body Outdoors.

Happy walking and writing until next time,

Sarah

More from The Writer’s Walk

If you enjoyed learning about Rebecca’s story and work, you might also enjoy my interview with Hana Sutch, Co-founder of walking app Go Jauntly, who’s helping to break down barriers and improve access to green space.

Hello walkers and writers 👋🏻

May is National Walking Month in the UK and there’s lots of events – many free – happening around the country. It’s also the London Walking Festival and there’s heaps to explore with talks, workshops and walks.

I’ve also been very busy with walkerly writerly stuff. An impromptu walk with Mental Health Mates in Beverley led to a chance conversation with Radio Humberside’s Richard Stead. We chatted about why I started The Writer’s Walk and where it might be going next. You can hear it on BBC Sounds until 23 May (I’m on at 16 mins into the show).

And to mark National Walking Month, the lovely folk at Whitefox Publishing got in touch and asked me to do a Q&A with them. In that post I share a couple of my favourite walking writers, the writer I’d love to walk with, and a writing prompt.

And in case you missed it, I went for a walk n talk in Oxford with writer and tone of voice master, Nick Parker. We chatted about curiosity, movement, learning and experimenting and you can read it in our interview. And don’t forget to check out his Substack, Tone Knob, for all things tone of voice.

So on we go to this edition, where I share what I noticed when I stopped staring at the ground beneath my feet – or at my phone! – and lifted my head to look around.

Walking

I usually start my in-person walkshops with a little warm-up exercise to help people notice how they walk. First, I invite everyone to imagine they’re running an errand or doing their usual commute as we walk around. Next, I invite them to imagine they have more time and ask them to walk around again. Afterwards, I ask them what they noticed and how they felt each time. In the first warm-up, most people look down at the ground or at their feet, they lean forward, take short steps and walk quickly. And in the second, they lift their heads, walk slower, take longer steps and look around more. The warm-up exercise often results in a chat about how busy they are and that they’re often so focused on getting from A to B, or checking their phone as they move, that they don’t pay much attention to what’s around them. We also chat about posture and how we feel when we walk with our head down and shoulders hunched compared with when we walk with our head up and back straight. Most people agree that when they slow down a bit and lift their head, they feel better than when they’re hunched up and racing about.

There’s growing research into this too, with studies on the impact our posture has on things like headaches, back pain, stress, confidence and even brain function and memory. It would appear that not only are we less likely to notice obstacles like other people, cyclists or traffic when we walk with our heads down, it impacts our posture, which can impact our blood flow, breathing, stress and how we feel emotionally12.

While many of the studies are small, or focus on posture while sitting or standing rather than walking, I think it’s still food for thought. Because the point of The Writer’s Walk is to slow down, take your time and notice the things around you, so you can take creative inspiration from them.

You see, if I hadn’t looked up while walking through Tivoli Corner at the Bank of England…

…I wouldn’t have noticed the hole in the roof or the words carved into it.

If I hadn’t looked up when I paused to catch my breath while stomping up a steep hill on the Gower Peninsula in Wales, I might have missed this paraglider.

If I hadn’t looked up when taking a Sunday stroll along the London Parkland Walk, I might have missed this Spriggan – a sculpture by Marilyn Collins.

If I hadn’t looked up while walking along my favourite London street, I wouldn’t have spotted this unexpected cascade of greenery on a rooftop.

If I hadn’t looked up while walking in Shoreditch, I would never have seen this monkey perched on top of a street sign.

Looking up when walking in nature also has benefits. You might spot a sparrowhawk circling above you, see an interesting looking cloud, or catch the trees dancing when they think you’re not looking.

So this time, I invite you to try the warm-up exercises for yourself then go for a walk, making a point of slowing down and pausing to look up once in a while. Because, as a wise man once said:

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
Ferris Bueller

Writing

Reflect on your walk by using one, or all, of these starting points:

• When I looked down I saw

• When I looked up I saw

• When I looked down I felt

• When I looked up I felt

As always, please feel free to let me know what you thought to this edition and what you noticed during your warm-up or on your walk. And remember to keep looking up.

Leave a comment

Happy walking and writing until next time.

Sarah

More from The Writer’s Walk

If you enjoyed this edition and want more reasons to look up and around, check out Walking in colour.

Hello walkers and writers 👋

If you’re a copywriter, or in any way interested in how brands speak and where they get their voices from, then chances are you’ve heard of Nick Parker. He’s spent years delving into language, unpicking the stitching to see how it all works, then using his knowledge and talent to help the brands he works with. He’s had a brilliant career, from deputy editor of The Oldie to strategy partner at The Writer, to setting up his own language studio. He’s helped hundreds of brands find their voice, trained thousands of people and writes the brilliant Tone Knob newsletter where he geeks out about brands that are doing interesting things with their voice and language.

Endlessly curious, always experimenting with new things, Nick’s what you might call a *whispers* polymath. Except he probably wouldn’t use that word cos it’s a bit fancy, innit.

As fellow brand writers, we kinda move in the same circles, except we’ve not worked together directly and haven’t had the chance to chat much about writing. Nick’s done lots of interviews, podcasts, talks and conferences – where the focus is usually on brand tone of voice. So I thought it’d be interesting to peel back the layers to find the source of all that creativity. Where does it come from, what does it eat? And why?

We met for a brand ramble aka a Bramble (trademark pending) in Oxford to find words in the wild. Our walk took us along the canal, through Port Meadow, St Sepulchre’s Cemetery in Jericho and into Blackwell’s. We also strolled around the Pitt Rivers Museum where we had a fascinating chat with a curator about magic, witches, totems and wands, and I showed Nick my favourite ever museum object – a silvered glass bottle said to contain a witch.

We had a brilliant time putting this interview together for you and hope you enjoy it.

Hiya Nick, thanks for ‘walking n talking’ with me. We’ve known each other a while, so for the benefit of our readers, please introduce yourself

I live just outside Reading, in Berkshire. By the Thames. It’s very pretty. There are lots of walks. In fact, it’s the sort of place people come on holiday to do a bit of walking. I grew up in a city so that always catches me out.

I say I’m ‘mostly, a writer’. I worked in magazine publishing, then at a creative agency, now I work for myself. I’ve tried all sorts of other titles (‘language strategist’, ‘creative consultant’ etc) but they always feel a bit try-hard and I invariably end up back at ‘writer’.

You spend a lot of your time helping brands find their voice. Have you ever found the lines blurring between your own voice and someone else’s, or felt that you’re losing yours because you’re often writing as other people or brands?

Oh, that’s an interesting question. My instinctive answer is that no, I don’t find the lines blurring: I think I’ve always had a fairly good sense of my own voice – of the sorts of perspectives that I like to take on things, and the ways I like to talk about them (which is mostly about how I use humour, I think.) And although I’ve written in lots of different voices for my clients, I actually tend not to get asked to do funny stuff very often.

That said – there’s a directness to most copywriting – of knowing why you’re writing, where you’re going, and what the pay-off for the reader is – and I think that directness has become part of my own voice. I notice when I do other types of ‘creative’ writing – fiction or poetry – that I can’t shake that directness.

Though thinking about it, I wrote most of the short stories – which are all under 2,000 words, often only a page or so – in my book The Exploding Boy before I worked as a copywriter. So maybe directness is just me, after all.

You’ve spent years learning to sing. Has it taught you anything about tone of voice, and have you changed your approach as a result?

Ha! Yes. I have. It’s been a long, weird journey: I had an awful, tuneless, strangulated sort of voice. If I ever had to sing in public, I’d just mime. But I really wanted to be able to sing – people who sing seemed to be having the best time!

And also for some reason that I can’t explain, I had this strong sense that singing was something I was supposed to be able to do! So over the last ten years, I’ve been slowly, slowly, learning to sing: every couple of years I’d have a few lessons, and verrrry gradually, it started to come together. The last couple of years I’ve been singing at open mic nights, which has helped enormously. I’m not great, but people don’t wince like they used to.

To be honest, I don’t think it’s taught me much about ‘voice’ – but it has been a huge lesson in the power of incremental change. It’s basically been a decade. That’s an absurd amount of time really. Yet I kind of did it ‘with hope, but without expectation’ and enjoyed the journey for what it was, and all of a sudden here I am. I think part of the reason I still talk about the ‘journey from not being able to sing’ is that I haven’t quite got my head round the fact that I can just do it now.

And what’s your favourite song to sing?

The Book of Love, by the Magnetic Fields. Greatest love song ever written.

You’re constantly learning and experimenting with creativity. What does living a creative life mean to you?

I think there’s a few things going on for me. Partly, I’m just happiest when I’m making something – and that can be a bit of writing, a drawing or painting, playing music, making food, making something out of wood, whatever. Days where I’ve used my hands and ‘made a thing’ are the days that feel well spent.

Also – I’m just really drawn to learning new stuff. I love the moment where the fog of confusion and ineptitude lifts and you’re like oooh, I get it now. And I like the practice of often being in ‘beginners’ mind’.

I did a project where I learned to play the trumpet in a month, to play at a festival called Inexpert. I learned origami during lockdown. A couple of years ago I taught myself to make furniture out of scaffolding planks. Sometimes it’s just small things – like teaching myself to whistle using my fingers, or doing a proper wheelie on my bike.

It’s one of the best things about the internet is that you can both learn to do almost anything from YouTube, and – even better – you can find a teacher for almost anything. I’m gonna have a lesson to learn the basics of playing the musical saw in a few weeks. How cool is that?! (OK, not cool at all. But you know what I mean).

There’s a balance, though. It’s easy for me to always be finding new things to do. At the moment, I’m trying to ‘start from what’s here, rather than what’s absent’, if that makes sense.

What creative ‘thing’ are you most proud of doing, and why?

I think it’s always the thing I’m working on at the moment! Once something’s done, it feels obvious and inevitable. I was pleased with the little book On Reading. The idea came unexpectedly, and – because I broke my leg and was laid up! – the process of writing it was enjoyable. Putting it out into the world has sparked so many great conversations, new friendships, etc.

(Sarah’s note: On Reading is a gorgeous book that fits perfectly in your pocket.)

Any tips on what people can do to get more play and creativity into their life?

Oh – find other people to play with! It took me ages to realise this. I used to just chug away at things by myself, which is fine but… lonely! The cartoonist Lynda Barry says of drawing that it’s a ‘solitary activity that we must do together’ – and I think that’s true of most creative things, even ones that at first glance might seem like ‘solo activities’. A month in a band beats years of solitary music practice. A book club. A sewing circle. A writing group.

You’ve been working on being more ‘in your body’ in recent years with things like pilates and yoga. It seems like movement/exercise was something you previously avoided, so I wondered if it’s brought any unexpected benefits other than physical health?

Ha, that’s true. Not unlike singing, in fact. I was always very ‘disconnected’ from my body, and very inflexible. Then I started to get a bad back. And exactly like singing, actually – I now have a much stronger sense of being an ‘integrated whole’.

I think being a writer got me stuck in my head too much. I’ve realised I’m most content when I can take ‘short forays’ into my head. If ever I’m feeling out of sorts – particularly if I’m feeling anxious – it’s often just because I haven’t been up and out and moving enough. I feel like I re-learn this lesson every few months!

Sticking with the theme of movement, what role does walking play in your writing life?

I’m a sort of practical walker, I think: I tend to do purposeful ‘A to B’ type walking (like not taking the tube in London, but walking wherever I need to go.) And also a ‘walk-and-talker’ – walking is a great ‘problem-solving technology’. Either talking to yourself, or with other people. I love all kinds of walks – big mountain walks, getting lost in city walks, familiar walks, exploring new places walks. But I like them most of all when I’m having a really good conversation at the same time.

Curiosity seems to be the thread that connects your creative pursuits from writing and drawing, to music and movement. There’s bound to be times when you come across something and think ‘meh’, even if it’s just occasionally. So when that happens, what do you do to reignite your curiosity and interest?

Oh, I just go and do something else for a bit. I think we all have ‘seasons’ of interest in stuff. I think the knack is to have different interests for different times. Outdoors in the sun stuff. Indoors by the fire stuff. Stuff that stretches your brain. Stuff you can do on autopilot. Stuff you do with others, stuff you do alone…

I’m aware that I sound like a slightly frenetic ‘always learning!!’ kinda person. The reality is much slower than that. Most of the things – music, art, singing, movement – ebb and flow, there are years on and years off.

What’s your walking style?

Definitely Walk n Talker!

Headphones or head in the clouds?

I’ve always wanted to be a ‘walk-and-podcast listener’, and quite often I’ll dig out an interesting sounding podcast and head out for a lunchtime walk… then after about 5 minutes I’ll find I’ve taken my headphones off! There’s something a bit claustrophobic for me about headphones. I like to hear what’s going on around me.

If you could take a walk with anyone, real or fictional, alive or gone, who would it be?

I’d like to walk n talk with my parents – they both died fairly young. I’d love a walk n talk with them.

One word round

• One thing you always take with you on a walk? Herbals. (Actually, not always, but as often as possible. They’re the taste of North Wales mountains to me!)

• One word to describe how you feel about writing? Essential.

• One word to describe how you feel about the trumpet? Joyful.

I usually ask writers to share a walking-inspired writing prompt, but let’s flip that on its head – can you share a writing-inspired walking prompt for our readers?

Just before you head out for a walk, grab a book at random from your shelf and read a page or two. Use this as the stimulus on your walk. You might talk about it with someone else. You might just mull it over in your own mind. You might use it as something to respond to with your own writing. I find that this gives a walk a distinctive ‘inner landscape’ that makes them memorable.

Thanks for walking and talking with me, Nick – and for indulging me in my intrigue with witches trapped inside silvered bottles.

You can learn more about Nick’s work on his website where you can also get hold of his book, On Reading, and you should definitely sign up to his newsletter, Tone Knob, for all things brand and voice.

I’ll leave you with this final tip from Nick on creativity:

Happy walking and writing until next time.

Sarah

More from The Writer’s Walk

Follow in our footsteps with a wander around a museum.

Hello walkers and writers 👋🏻

I don’t know about you, but I find the extended break over Easter really disrupts my routine. Working for myself means that bank holidays don’t have the same meaning as they did when I was employed (they’re basically a day off without pay). So I tend not to think of them until they’re right on top of me and I realise my calendar is unusually quiet because everyone else is out of the office.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve put that extra time in my diary to good use with some spontaneous walks:

• I hunted down the giant Easter eggs that popped up around London.

• I took advantage of an unexpectedly sunny day to revisit an old favourite – the Flamborough Head coastline in East Yorkshire.

• I went for a walk in Millington Wood1 where I had a chance encounter with an East Riding Council Countryside Officer who told me about Tophill Low Nature Reserve, which turned out to be a hidden gem with an abundance of birdsong.

And a quieter working day meant I was able to join Mental Health Mates Beverley for a group walk along Beverley Beck. That led to another chance encounter – with Richard Stead of BBC Radio Humberside who was there to interview walk leader, Clare Greaves, and other walkers from the community. Richard and I chatted about walking and he shared our interview on his show. If you fancy hearing about The Writer’s Walk and how I started it, it’s available on BBC Sounds until 23 May. I’m on at about 16 minutes into the show.

Anyway, all of this spontaneity and chance encountering means I don’t have the next ‘regular’ edition of The Writer’s Walk ready for you, so I’ve strolled through the archive and picked out some of the most popular past editions.

I hope you find something here to inspire your walks and writing. Stay tuned for our next edition where I’ll be sharing a new interview.

Happy walking and writing until next time.

Sarah

That’s what Hana Sutch has discovered through walking. And it’s these challenges to access, and the realisation that she rarely sees someone who looks like her when she’s on a leisure walk, that motivated her to do something about it.

Hana is the co-founder and CEO at Go Jauntly, a multi award-winning walking, wayfinding and nature connection app.

As desk-bound London city-dwellers she and her co-founders yearned to be a bit more active – without resorting to the gym. When they saw how hard it was to find walks and trails in familiar, local places – especially with young families – they decided to do something about that by creating a walking app.

Like Hana, I’m not a fan of the gym, so I knew we already had that in common – together with our love of walking and desire to share that with others. I’m also inspired by how she’s raising awareness of the challenges to accessing green space, and love what she’s building with Go Jauntly. So we met for a wander and she told me all about her love of walking. I’m really honoured to share her story with you here.

Hi Hana, thanks for chatting with me. Please introduce yourself.

Hi! I’m Hana Sutch, co-founder and CEO at Go Jauntly, the multi award-winning walking, wayfinding and nature connection app. I live in South East London with my family and our crazy-fun cockapoo. 

I have a design and tech background and worked agency-side for most of my early career and delivered massive digital projects for the likes of Xbox, Nike, Science Museum and more.

My connection to nature (and love of walking) definitely developed later on in life and really blossomed after I had a kid. It was really important to me that they grew up with a good connection with the natural world, despite living in the big smoke.

You co-founded Go Jauntly, in 2016. What motivated you to create it?

The app was born out of a frustration of not being able to find nice places to go for a walk despite living in London which is actually 47% green space! Getting out into nature is often associated with ‘the great outdoors’ which is inaccessible to so many people. Access to green space isn’t equitable. Women, people of colour, people with health conditions, kids, and people from low socio-economic backgrounds are the least likely to access nature – but would benefit the most. I really wanted to do what I could to break down the barriers to walking, like not knowing where to go, whether there were loos onsite, how muddy it was, what the walk looked like, or where to walk. Most of the existing apps were targeted at the already fit, trad white male hill-hiker types and not at people like me.

What’s been the most fun about creating a walking app?

I’ve got to travel a lot! Especially across the UK. Quite often we curate brand new walking routes for our clients and partners which means not only some initial desk research but literal boots on ground, surveying and groundtruthing the routes. We get to trial the routes ourselves and whilst sometimes the routes are no good due to things like badly maintained paths, on the whole it’s been a really fun and positive experience. Then seeing people out and about enjoying the routes we’ve created after they’ve gone out ‘into the wild’ is amazing. We try to make really great walks. Ones that feature a bit of everything from good local cafes or pubs to pretty gardens and streets through to sweeping vistas. And we mustn’t forget the loos, we always need the loos!

And what hurdles did you have to overcome?

Ah, so many hurdles. We’re bootstrapped so we aren’t backed with VC money. It’s been a lot of hard graft. Blood, sweat, tears or broken ankles (on a client walk!). 

What obstacles to walking do people face these days?

The billionaire tech bros have a lot to answer for on so many levels. The attention economy has stolen our freedom to be well-rested, bored, inspired, creative, at ease. Doomscrolling news and social media has made the few very rich and the masses poorer for it in so many ways. More unhealthy, more sedentary, more isolated, less happy, less active and worse off all round. I know it might be weird for a tech founder with an app to say this but it’s true.

We’re so reliant on cars, people don’t realise that it’s 9 to 12 times more polluted inside a car compared to outside a car and that those 5-minute journeys you make in a car could be walked in 25 mins or less. Domestic transport emissions accounted for 29% of our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2023. One way to be more active and more sustainable is to ditch the car for short trips. 

For me, being a walker isn’t about climbing hills or visiting national parks – it’s about building more walking trips into your everyday life. It’s a great way to connect with the natural world, it’s good for you physically and mentally. Start small like I did. 10 mins here, 10 mins there and give it a few years you’ll be walking 20 miles over two days like I accidentally did a few weeks ago for work. 

Your background is in tech and digital design. How do you think tech can support, or enhance people’s experience of walking and nature?

Go Jauntly is an enabler. It helps you find walks on the go and new walks in your neighbourhood or further afield. Occasionally, some people say that they don’t need a phone to go on a walk and I’m like, great, I’m really happy for you but lots of people don’t have your confidence. They can’t read a map, they aren’t confident of their surroundings or they don’t know where to walk. This is where we step in. People can preview our walks in advance, check out the photo-led guides, head to the destination and then pop their phone in their pocket and only get it out when they need guidance or more inspiration.

Our app is not designed to keep you at home, with endless scrolling/watching videos from dubious influencers or advertisers but designed to get you out and about and enjoying nature. One of our hypotheses at the start was if we can get more people to walk for leisure then they’ll be more likely to walk for active travel. A recent poll of 3,000 app users on our leisure walks showed that nearly 90% agreed that they now walk more for active travel as a result of Go Jauntly. That is a massive win for us as walking is good for people and the planet.

What has Go Jauntly taught you about walking and people’s relationship with it?

What I didn’t fully understand when I was in the early days of Go Jauntly is…

1. How much good walking infrastructure affects your feelings about walking. If the paths are flat, there are no barriers, it’s green/nature-filled, you see other people like you walking, the propensity to walk is so much higher. 

2. How few people that look like me I’ve seen on my leisure walks. I’m of mixed heritage and I think I’ve seen about 10 people who look similar to me out and about on leisure walks in the last 10 years. There’s so much more work needed for diversity in the outdoors.

3. Not only am I trying to get people to download my walking app, I’m trying to get people who don’t walk, to walk more! This is the only way to make true social impact and promote behavior change and it is a massive task that I completely underestimated.

You partnered with the Nature Connectedness Research Group at the University of Derby to create a research app that would measure the impact of noticing urban nature on mental health. What did you learn from that?

The Nature Notes feature was developed as part of the £1.3m Improving Wellbeing Through Urban Nature project. Studies led by the University of Derby’s Nature Connectedness Research Group (NCRG) found that using a smartphone app to prompt people to notice the good things in urban nature not only increased their connection with nature, but brought key wellbeing benefits to users. Crucially, the research found it brought clinically significant improvements in quality of life for people living with a mental health difficulty.

We learnt about the pathways to nature connectedness which informs a lot of our work:

• Contact through the senses.

• Emotions (relating to awe and relaxation).

• Appreciation of nature’s beauty.

• Finding meaning in nature.

• Displays of compassion for nature.

Nature Notes is a bit like a nature diary or journal to capture the good things you see in everyday nature. Daily prompts remind you to notice the natural world and can be used as a tool to help you self-manage mental health and wellbeing. It’s really simple to use:

• Take a moment to pause and notice the good things in nature. 

• It could be as simple as noticing a bird singing or the colours and movement of a tree in the breeze - and the joy and calm it brings.

• When you're ready, write a short note in the app about a good thing you noticed in nature. You can include a picture if you like.

• Doing this everyday for a week can provide a month's wellbeing benefit.

• Nature Notes can be used within your home or garden or as part of your local walks and outdoor adventures. 

The amazing thing about nature connection is the more connected to nature you are, the more likely you are to want to preserve it, which is essential in the fight against climate breakdown and biodiversity loss.

Other than inspiring Go Jauntly, what role does walking play in your work as a digital product and service designer?

Walking helps keep me sane. It’s something that is really easy to fit into my crazy busy lifestyle. I am always spinning lots of plates and sadly I am a bit of a workaholic. One day I will be a recovering workaholic and be able to walk a lot more but for now it’s mainly my mental health prop and a place for new ideas. Lots of ideas pop into my head whilst walking, which helps me a lot, as sometimes when you’re chained to the desk, creativity is stifled. I think every walk should be joyful, so I always try to walk the ‘Green Route’ from A to B – to the shops or pharmacy, etc. – every walk should be pleasurable. The 'Green Routes' feature on Go Jauntly is one of my favourites. It helps you walk the leafiest, greenest and least polluted way to and from any location in the UK and Ireland. It's perfect for avoiding busy and polluted streets and getting an extra dose of nature in.

What’s your walking style?

Daily jaunter.

Headphones on or head in the clouds?

A bit of both! Some days, a rage walk might need some music blasting and other days a calm, slow walk where I tune into the birdsong is a must.

What’s your most memorable walk?

The best walk I’ve ever done was in Chirk, Wrexham. It was my first solo hike and it was only a couple of years ago. It was 6 miles which is the furthest distance in one go for me as well. I did it with my dodgy ankle and I had the best time. I was so anxious beforehand. I was worried about being solo, about the unknown, whether I’d make it all the way around but it was fine. More than fine! Previously I was more into shorter walks, ones that I could do with my kid but now I have an urge to do a long distance walk. Now that I know I can do it, I want more.

The Chirk walk is available for free on the Go Jauntly app.

If you could take a walk with anyone, real or fictional, alive or gone, who would it be?

I would like to go for a walk with Audre Lorde. I’m reading Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches at the moment and she is such an incredible woman and her words really stand the test of time for me. She was/is so on point with her observations of society, racism, sexism, patriarchy and capitalism. She was so prescient and it’s kind of shocking to read now in the light of the rise of fascism and billionaire tech bros mimicking feudalism, and I think a walk with her would be enlightening. 

“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”

Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider

One word round

• One thing you always take with you on a walk?
  Water (and my phone!)

• One word to describe how walking makes you feel?
  Wholesome

• One word to describe how you feel about creating tech for good?
  Duty

Finally, please can you share a nature observation or journalling prompt for our readers?

Head out for a walk and note down 3 good things you see in nature. Why are they good? How does it make you feel? What good thing could you do for nature in return?

Thanks for chatting with me, Hana, and for sharing the story behind Go Jauntly, the access challenges that so many people face, and the wellbeing benefits of being more connected with nature.

To find out more, and to try Nature Notes for yourself, you can download the Go Jauntly app for free on iOS or Android. The Nature Notes feature is available on iOS only.

Happy walking and writing until next time,

Sarah

More from The Writer’s Walk

If you enjoyed hearing Hana’s story, you might also enjoy reading about Jen Lowthrop – another entrepreneur who’s championing the benefits of nature and walking.

Hello walkers and writers 👋🏻

Today is National Walking Day – and what better way to get into the walkerly writer habit than with a spring stroll. If you’re new to walking or writing then it only takes 10 minutes a day to get into it. And hopefully these posts will help inspire you to take your first walks with words.

Walking

I woke up the other day thanks to the morning light flooding into my bedroom. Remembering a meeting I had to get to, and thinking I’d seriously overslept and might miss it, I checked the time and actually squealed when I saw that it was only 6am. Yeah, I’m one of those morning people.

I opened the blind, and for the first time in days, instead of a dishrag grey sky, it was blue, blue, blue. And across the street, a tree that I swear had been bare the day before was alive with blossom.

All of a sudden, spring was here.

I am a summer soul. I’m drawn to the light and want to burrow away when the days are dark and long. UK winters feel so long that as soon as spring pops up, I need to get up with the dawn each day because I don’t want to waste a single drop of the light.

There’s no better way to set up my day than to get up and out for a walk just before dawn and head eastward to see the sunrise.

I visit my favourite tree in Victoria Park – this lovely old magnolia, which may not be the most photographed tree in London, but it’s the closest magnolia tree to where I live and I like to track the seasons by it.

I absolutely must do a bluebell walk (they usually flower in May) and I love those because I get to combine them with walking in woodland.

I follow the sounds of birds.

I follow the scent of blossoms and flowers.

And I might even take off my boots and ground myself by walking barefoot.

So I invite you to take a spring walk and notice the world coming back to life after its winter snooze. Explore with all the senses – sight, smell, sound and touch – and pay attention to what stands out for you. Perhaps you’ll notice a flower, birdsong, the temperature or the quality of the light as it passes over trees, grass or water.

Writing

Write a 6-word refection of your walk. And for an extra twist, to make it more interesting and to help stretch your writing muscles, try making it an acrostic-style piece of writing where the first letter of each word spells out this 6-letter word:

S
P
R
I
N
G

As always, please feel free to comment with what you enjoy most about spring and what you notice on your walks.

Leave a comment

Happy walking and writing until next time.

Sarah

PS The sunrise photo of me taking down my tent was taken by Ian Finch, expedition leader and photographer, during a weekend of sailing, hiking and wild camping in Norfolk.

More from The Writer’s Walk

If you enjoyed this edition or if you’re in the southern hemisphere right now, you might like Walking into autumn.

Hello writers and walkers 👋🏻

In our last edition we wandered around our favourite libraries and found writing prompts hidden in the pages of books. Thanks to everyone who got in touch to tell me how much you enjoyed it and to share your own experiences of libraries and book-borrowing.

This time, we’re heading back outdoors. So grab your notebooks, pencils and boots – and keep your mind wide open as we get ready for our wildest adventure yet.

Walking

Did you know that all around the world there are portals to other dimensions? Often hidden in plain sight, they come in every shape and size you can imagine. And once you know how to spot them, you’ll notice them everywhere.

Sometimes they appear as literal doors…

At other times they appear as littoral doors…

You can often see right through them, and might even be able to walk around them. But have you ever wondered what might happen if you… stepped through one…

portal, n.

1. A door, gate, doorway, or gateway.

2. A lesser gate or entrance; a side entrance.

3. A natural entrance, as of a cave or mountain pass.

4. The entrance to a tunnel.

5. A feature consisting of upright stones in an arrangement resembling a doorway or entrance passage. (See: portal stone).

6. A means of entering another world or dimension, or of travelling instantaneously from one place or time to another, often imagined as a door or window.

Some are sought out by hikers who mistakenly believe they’re Ordnance Survey trig markers. But if you happen to be walking by one on the right day of the year, when there’s no one else around, and the light flows in from a particular angle, you might discover that it’s actually a portal…

You’ll often find them in nature. Entering one of these is as easy as following a path…

Or heading into a cave…

Some are so small that you can only pass through them using your imagination…

While others manifest as reflections of the sunset…

Some take the form of ancient monuments that attract crowds of onlookers, eagerly waiting for the sun to activate them at just the right moment…

And in busy places, like city train stations, they’ll only reveal themselves if you’re alone…

And some portals need no introduction at all…

So on your next walk, I invite you to keep an eye out for a portal. But when you find one, make sure you tell someone where you are before you disappear through it!

Writing

Your writing prompt this time is simple but has the potential to lead you in all manner of creative directions. Once you find your portal, answer this question:

• What’s on the other side?

Let me know if you find a portal, and what you discovered on the other side, by leaving a comment👇🏻

Leave a comment

See you on the other side,

Sarah

More from The Writer’s Walk

Walk yourself happy with an imaginary stroll.