Slow Ways for everyone who🚶🏃🏾‍♀️👩🏻‍🦽🚴‍🏇🏾!

Aim

Now’s the time - back our project to develop the ultimate walking, running, wheeling, cycling & horse riding network for Britain and Ireland

May 2026 Update

Thank you to everyone who supported our crowdfunding campaign last year! We're delighted to share our latest big update.

We've built an initial website for the project for gathering people together to share ideas, test the new app, spread the word, share routes and build momentum. 

It's not the final app or website. It is a springboard for making them a success.

Here's what you need to know:

• You can now visit our new membership site here,
• The website, app and our Community Interest Company are now called Good Ways,
• Good Ways is a much larger and more ambitious project than Slow Ways. Good Ways will host Slow Ways and eventually everything we promised. This new approach means we will be able to invest in Slow Ways while gaining the ability to support thousands of other nonprofit projects too,
• Did you support this crowdfunder? Expecting a membership reward? You will receive an email this week. If you supported us more than once you may get more than one email.

Thanks so much for your interest and support. We would love for you to join us on Good Ways and to help make the project a success.

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Here's our 2025 crowdfunding campaign! 

We’re crowdfunding to make it easier for everyone to find and follow the best routes - whether you walk, run, cycle, scoot, skate, ride a horse, or use a pushchair or wheelchair.

Too many of us miss out on active travel and enjoying new places simply because we don’t know which way to go. We’re here to fix that.

We need your help to:

⭐ Create a website and app that makes it easy to find, follow and share the best routes

❤️ Crowd-source routes for all abilities and interests

✅ Add shorter and circular routes

🌍 Expand to connect more people and places

👍🏽 Enable charities, schools, clubs, councils and groups to share special-interest routes: nature trails, heritage hikes, family loops, wheelchair accessible adventures, easy runs, wellbeing rides, dark sky wanders and so much more..

Where we’re coming from

Thanks to thousands of people we’ve already created a Slow Ways national walking network with 140,000km of routes that connect all of Britain’s towns, cities and national landscapes.

We’ve proven the idea. Now it’s time to take it to the next level.

Where we’re going

With your support we’ll help millions of people to find, follow and enjoy great routes that match their diverse interests and needs - making places more enjoyable and inclusive in the process. 

We'll make the network much bigger and better, add more ways of getting around, enable groups and organisations to share routes for communities and develop website and app to make it all happen.

Polling by YouGov and Opinium indicates that nearly 30 million adults across Britain, Ireland and the Channel Islands will want to use the network - yes, 30 million!

Why this matters

This is about making our lives, communities and planet better. Together we can:

✅ Improve people's health and wellbeing
✅ Reduce emissions and tackle the climate crisis
✅ Boost joy, creativity, and imagination
✅ Bring people together, reducing isolation
✅ Connect people, nature, and heritage
✅ Increase accessibility and inclusion
✅ Boost local economies
✅ Create shared purpose and common ground
✅ Nurture unity and togetherness
✅ Save people money

..all by making it easier to walk, run, wheel, cycle or ride places.

What Will Be Better

We’re building a website and network that will:

✔︎ Be easy to use
✔︎ Make it easier to find, follow and share the best routes
✔︎ Expand and improve our existing network

✔︎ Cover all of Britain, Ireland and the Channel Islands
✔︎ Include running, wheeling, cycling and horse riding
✔︎ Feature special-interest routes: nature walks, family loops, etc.

✔︎ Enable groups and organisations to share special interest routes
✔︎ Show points of interest and diversions
✔︎ Be world-class for wheelchair, scooter and pushchair users

The network will expand to include lots more places, including every town, city, village, postcode and public park, beach, library, community centre, station, pitch, stop, shop, hilltop and more.

We're especially excited by special-interest routes, some of which will be super-niche. People and organisations will be able to share routes that match the interests of their communities. You can expect heritage trails, ancient tree treks, the best local couch-to-10K runs, wellbeing rides, Year 7 geography field adventures, fully accessible circular adventures and more.

After all, a single path can be used by multiple people for multiple reasons.

More power to communities

Community groups, clubs, schools, local councils, charities, NHS teams, libraries, arts centres, social prescribers, social enterprises and local champions - when was the last time we joined up to make something brilliant together?

The platform will empower local schools, charities, councils and community groups to build their own networks.

Imagine a school sharing nature-rich, family-friendly routes for parents and students. Then the next school does the same. Soon, we’ve created a national walking network for children and families - built from the ground up. 

And what if other groups and organisations did the same for their communities?

How We’re Different

We love OS Maps, Strava, Komoot and the outdoor navigation gang. We use them ourselves - but nobody's doing everything we're doing. 

🌍 Mission-led: For community, not profit
🧭 Focussed on Britain, Ireland and the Channel Islands
🤝 Community-powered: Made with and for the public

🎯 Shared aims: Know why and how people have designed routes
🦉 Special-interest: Working for all active travel abilities and interests
✅ Verified routes and networks – No randomness or chaos

🧩 Built for collaboration: Not individualism
📂 Open data: Built to be shared, not locked down
🌐 A network of networks – A single place for great routes

We know we’re the underdog, but it’s wild this doesn’t already exist - so we’re building it for all of us.

Back us, be a member and get new powers!

Slow Ways routes will always be publicly available and free for everyone to follow and enjoy. 

We’ll be introducing memberships for people and groups that would like to support our work. In return, we’ll give you extra benefits, features and powers.

For less than the cost of a pair of walking socks and few coffees, as an individual member you’ll be able to enjoy special member-only benefits, including:

✔︎ Better features and functionality - See the table below!
✔︎ A growing calendar of talks, podcasts, meet-ups and workshops
✔︎ Votes on what we develop next

Community organisation members will additionally get:

✔︎ Tools to collaboratively develop route collections and networks
✔︎ Training, talks, workshops, newsletters, podcasts and online forums
✔ Public profile on the platform, with the same abilities as individuals

Memberships cost £30 per year for individuals (£2.50/month) and £50 per year for nonprofit community organisations.

What we are doing is highly valuable, but that doesn't mean it has to cost a lot.

And here’s the best part - for every paying member we’ll provide a free membership to a person, school charity or community group that can’t afford one. 

Your membership doesn’t just unlock more for you. It helps someone else too.

And if your membership ends, your routes will remain on the platform.

Support us and get rewards!

We've lots of great rewards.

✔︎ Individual membership - get discounts for life
✔︎ Sponsor a nonprofit community organisation
✔︎ Sponsor a village, town, city or other community

✔︎ Get, gift or donate memberships
✔︎ Recognition on our new website's thank you page
✔︎ Slow Ways beanies and baseball caps - exclusive to this campaign

When you sponsor a nonprofit organisation they will get Community Organisation Membership and two memberships for staff or volunteers - giving every community organisation a team and everything they need to create a great active network.

As soon as we're ready, we’ll email you to ask what you want to do with your memberships. You will be able to choose to start straight away or when the new website is ready. 

We'll also ask you what you would like to do with any memberships you wish to gift or donate.

Choosing an exclusive Slow Ways beanie hat or baseball cap? We'll get it to you within a month of this campaign ending.

Champion your local area - do a fundraiser

Want to enable lots of local charities, schools, clubs, health teams, councils, libraries and nonprofits to create active routes for your community? Do a fundraiser for your local area and get rewards both for your local area and for you.

Fundraise £500 and you'll get 10 Community Organisation Team memberships for 10 local charities or other nonprofits. Imagine the difference that could make. 

You could give them to a new-parent club, nursery school, primary school, secondary school, nature group, heritage society, sports team, library, community centre, wellbeing walking group, wheelchair user society, elderly hikers meet-up, dark-skies runners... oh wait, that's more than 10? Don't worry - we have options to fundraise for even more community organisations too. Find out more here.

Where Your Money Goes

We’re a small, specialist, nonprofit Community Interest Company - no shares, no big backers, no sell-outs. We’re asset locked and limited by guarantee. We just want to build something incredible for us all to enjoy.

💥 Launch Target £100,000 - Build and test a user friendly first version of the platform

🎯 Main Goal £250,000 – Scale-up for full launch and national roll-out
🔥 Stretch Goal £500,000 – Unlock all features on this page
🚀 Mega Stretch £1,000,000 – New navigation apps for iOS & Android

If we don’t reach our £250,000 goal by the end of the campaign, you’ll have the option of a full refund or to continue supporting our journey.

How You Can Help

We’ve proven that Slow Ways works. Now let’s build the platform that brings active travel and adventures to millions more people across Britain, Ireland and the Channel Islands.

✅ Back this campaign – Choose a reward and pledge today

Supercharge your support by..

🎯 Fundraising for us - see below
🌍 Championing Slow Ways online and in your community
🎤 Booking  Slow Ways founder Dan Raven‑Ellison for a talk
💎 Unlocking extra membership discounts
📣 Opting  for additional campaign updates

We'd love your help to fundraise! You can easily set up your own fundraising page that feeds directly into this one. You'll find some resources to do a fundraising challenge here. 

If you want to fundraise for your Local Area click here. You can pick up great rewards for yourself and your area.

And to do any of these things sign-up here and we'll be in touch!

Find out more

Join one of our regular online "Future of Slow Ways" talks.

Got more questions? Would you like some more detail? Visit our FAQs page.

Want to explore Slow Ways more? Here are lots of links.

Thank you!

Thank you for your support.

Whether you’re pledging, sharing or fundraising - every action counts.

Together, we’ll connect people, places and communities - one brilliant route at a time!

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made