Well, Walkfest 2023 has come to an end for this year – and what a successful and enjoyable festival it’s been! Whether the walk has been less than a mile or a full 14 miles (or somewhere in-between) good numbers of people have turned up and walked, chatted or learned more about the area. Feedback has been universally positive with typical comments being about walkers getting the chance to visit parts of the borough that they hadn’t walked in before.
A snapshot of the past week gives some idea of how diverse the programme has been. We had walks from Guildford Health Walks – who had a group from Surrey Choices join them on one walk. As a new initiative, our supporters at QE Baptist Church hosted a Baby Buggy Wander on Whitmoor Common. Hopefully this will become a regular event to help all those mums with babies to get out and socialize. Our other church connected group – this time at Send – also put on one of their canal based walks and this is such a peaceful part of the waterway.
As always, the Ramblers put on an interesting walk. This week they went from Wood Street Village which is a part of the borough that many walkers have little knowledge of. Another regular was a Town Guides walk – entitled Fake or Fortune. I think that these are amongst my favourite short walks since every guide has their own specialist knowledge and clearly enjoys showing off the town.
As a grand finale, Surrey Hills Society hosted a 14-mile walk from Guildford to Dorking along the North Downs Way. This walk was run by Christine Howard and Ken Bare who are not only the President and Vice-President of the Society but are also the Chairman and Coordinator of Guildford Walkfest. A nice little bit of symmetry!
I think that I can do no better than to extend a big Thank You to all the walkers who participated in any of the walks, all the walk leaders / organisations who made it happen and the weather gods who were generally on our side this year.
Next September we will be doing it all again but don’t forget that all those walk locations are always there. So keep walking throughout the year and enjoy all that our borough has to offer.