Apr 27, 2020

Jane's Walk leaders talk walk leading (for newcomers)

Jane's Walk encourages everyone to discover the walk inside themselves and to tap the kind of 'lay expertise' we all have and can draw upon in putting together and hosting a walk for the first time.

In Colchester we welcome all walks and they take many shapes. Some do draw upon the kind of specialist knowledge (for example, historical or environmental) that you may expect from a conventional guided walk. If you've been on one of these, impressive and instructive as they are, you may not realise that the kind of walks that best express the original intent and spirit of the festival are those that encourage ordinary people to simply get out there on foot to talk about their local environment together. They are best thought of as 'walking conversations'. As a walk leader of this kind of walk, you are really a facilitator of that conversation. This is not to say that such walks don't need some careful preparation; just that we all have it within us to put an interesting walk together.

This post introduces you to two walk leaders talking about their experience of walk leading (two very different kinds of walk) for the first time. Slideshows of the walks they discuss are shown beneath their respective interviews...