Farnham Ramblers celebrated listing the 200,000th walk on the Ramblers Group Walks Finder by upgrading the planned picnic stop on their walk in Surrey's Alice Holt Forest to a champagne lunch.
The 12km/7.5 mile walk on Thursday 13 October, led by longstanding volunteer Ted Smiley, was covered by the local press and also attended by a representative of Ramblers main office -- Brenda Horwill, one of two volunteers who support the Walks Finder nationally.
Ted, who also carves unique wooden plaques, presented Brenda with a commemorative plaque. With no convenient pub or restaurant on the route, the pavilion at Linford Cricket Club agreed to open for the occasion.
The Farnham walkers, part of Ramblers Surrey Area, offer an extensive and varied programme of walks and are keen users of the Walks Finder, so were particularly pleased to discover they'd had the inadvertant honour of listing the 200,000th walk when they uploaded their current programme back in June.
The event marked a major milestone for a system that's become crucial to the way the Ramblers promotes its led walks and attracts new members. Before the Group Walks Finder was launched late in 2002, the only sources of information about Ramblers led walks were local programmes and publicity produced by Groups themselves, with the occasional all-Area programme.
When the system was first proposed, some volunteers were concerned that they would be overwhelmed with unmanageable numbers of walkers. In practice this hasn't happened -- instead it's become a key source of manageable numbers of welcome new recruits. It's also enabled existing members to take advantage of their right to walk with any Group by joining Ramblers walks when they travel and choosing from a wider selection close to home, particularly in highly populated areas where many Groups' walking territories overlap.
Over the next two years the system is set to improve even further with a major overhaul as part of the Ramblers web development project.
The photo above shows (left to right in foreground) walk leader Ted Smiley, Farnham Ramblers chair Liz Witham and Group Walks Finder volunteer Brenda Horwill.
For more about using the Group Walks Finder to promote your walks, see www.ramblers.org.uk/volunteer/groupwalksfinder.
The Group Walks Finder can be accessed at www.ramblers.org.uk/walksfinder.
Did you know?
- The Group Walks Finder was developed in-house during 2002 with the support of a government fund to help organisations and businesses recover from the impact of the 2001 Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) epidemic, when much of the British countryside was closed.
- The first listed walks were by various Groups in North Wales, where the Area, which has long produced an Area programme, was an "early adopter" of the system, using it on a trial basis before it was made available more widely.
- Brenda Horwill and her fellow volunteer Chris Percy have worked from Ramblers main office since February 2004, supporting Areas and Groups using the system.
- When Brenda and Chris started, 173 of the Ramblers' 500 Groups used the Walks Finder. Now, 83% of the Groups use it.
- Although local websites are a great way of communicating Ramblers activities, the Walks Finder is essential too, even for local users, as it is better indexed by search engines. Walks listed on the system can also be displayed on local websites without retyping the details.
- Although the Walks Finder automatically removes walks from public view the day after they take place, the details are retained internally, so we still have an archive of every walk that has ever been listed.
