The Slow Ways project is a wonderful thing: an example of what can be achieved when a large number of people decide to work together towards a common goal for no other reason than because they all agree said goal is inherently awesome. Created during lockdown with the simple aim of making it easier for people to travel on foot around England, Scotland and Wales, it has led to the creation of a remarkable network of walking routes: some 8,000 of them, stretching for over 120,000km and linking countless cities, villages and towns. Coordinated by Slow Ways founder Dan Raven-Ellison and a small team, some 70 volunteers helped test the concept in February 2020, 700 helped plot a draft of the network during the first Covid lockdown, and by the end of 2020 some 80,000 people had registered to walk and review routes.
Creating the network was one thing, however; encouraging people to use it was a different challenge entirely. Fortunately, as Slow Ways grew and became a Community Interest Company it attracted funding from a variety of backers. This in turn allowed it to offer small bursaries to those willing to “Tell the story of a trail”; and it’s hard to imagine a trail tale presented more effectively than in Slow Waves, a beautiful zine by writer David Lyons and photographer Mike Guest, detailing a walk they took along the Slow Ways route called “Duneye”, which runs for 42km between Dunbar and Eyemouth.
As suggested by the title of their publication, the route Lyons and Gu.