HAVING run right round the coast of Britain in just ten months, Elise Downing is now on a mission to encourage people to leave their cars behind and discover the joys of walking.
Just 23 when she set out on her coastal challenge, Downing became the youngest and only female to manage it – despite not being particularly fit when she set off.
A decade older, she has turned her attention to walking and is now the author of a handy guide to walking routes that can be easily accessed by public transport.
The 90 routes vary in length and difficulty, from multi-day adventures to short loops and navigations of whole islands.
The areas in Scotland that have been included are the Scottish Borders, the Isle of Arran, the Western Highlands and the Cairngorms.
Downing, who didn’t drive until she was 30 years old, told the Sunday National she was inspired to write the book because of her own experience of public transport.
“Up until I learned to drive, I was doing a lot of car-free adventures, trying to find wild places to go out hiking and running that I could get a train or bus to,” she said.
“Then when I posted about it on social media, I found that there was a misconception that you could only get to these places by driving.”
It struck Downing as ironic that people would seek out places where they could enjoy the outdoors but then sit in traffic in order to get there and possibly have to compete for a parking space once they arrived.
“It always seems a bit odd because we go to these places because of all the mental and physical health benefits of going outside but we don’t even consider going by public transport which is far more relaxing than driving,” she said.
Downing does acknowledge that public transport in the UK is far from perfect and can be expensive but all the areas included in the book can be used as a base.
“All the chapters are around a central location so you can either take the train or drive up the motorway to get there but then you can leave your car at the holiday cottage or campsite or wherever you are staying and use public transport more locally to get out and about,” she explained.
“Hopefully that increases the accessibility of these adventures for people who choose not to run a vehicle for environmental reasons, or because they can’t afford to, or are anxious about driving.
“What I have done is detailed where each route starts from in terms of the bus stop or the train station although I have not gone into huge details about specific buses because often timetables change so much.”
As well as making the journey to the walks more relaxing, Downing hopes her book will also have a positive environmental impact on the tiny places that host trailheads that are becoming inundated with tourists’ vehicles.
The base locations are chosen not only for their proximity to convenient public transport but also where there is a range of accommodation from hotels to campsites to suit all budgets.
Each area has been thoroughly researched by Downing herself which took longer than she expected and involved ditching a planned chapter on the Lincolnshire Wolds because the routes did not justify the effort to get there.
“That area is not well served by public transport and I didn’t want to send people off on convoluted bus journeys,” she said. “People might use their annual leave and spend hard-earned money to go and do these things so I really wanted them to be great and I didn’t want them to just put them in because you could get a bus to them.”
The places included in the book were ones Downing had visited and liked previously, although she found it hard to narrow it down after seeing many lovely places on her coastal challenge.
“The Isle of Arran is there because I love it and it has such a good bus service around the island,” she said.
“Islands make really good car-free adventures because you have to get a ferry to them and you can make it a much more affordable trip if you leave the car behind.”
She added: “I tried really hard to get a breadth of routes so every chapter has a base location which is easy to get to and then in each of these locations there is everything from a short family friendly walk under five miles, right up to big multi-day challenges. I’ve also tried to balance the well-known walks with those that are less well-known so there is a mix of both in each chapter.
“I really hope it will show the variety of walks that are available without having to use a car. It is also a bit of a jumping-off point to give inspiration and I hope people will then go on and plan their own car free adventures.”
Walk Britain by Elise Downing is published this month by Vertebrate Publishing.
