About ten years ago when staying in a YHA in the Lake District in the UK I noticed a poster promoting the website called Car Free Walks. Car Free Walks describes itself as “a community-driven outdoor website provid[ing] walks free of cars and free of charge. Every one of our walks can be reached using public transport – bus and train, coach and ferry.”

Car Free Walks sounded great as we were car-free and liked walking! It some ways the website name can be confusing as of course if you are walking you are not in car. Also, it could suggest that you will be walking in areas that are completely free of cars – which could be the case but unless it’s a remote spot that is unlikely given there are 41.7 million licensed vehicles in the UK to avoid.

As per the blurb on their website the car-free aspect is about getting to the start and back from the end of your walk without a car. This is particularly handy as if you’ve picked up many walking books they will likely make the assumption that you will be using a car – so if you don’t they are useless.

The best aspect of their site is that you can upload your own walks to share with others who want to be walking car-free. I did write a few – it did take a bit of time to type up the description and put the points onto the online map – but I can now look back and see that some people have had a go at, and enjoyed, our car-free walks.

Maybe this way of sharing things is now seen as a little ‘old school‘, with people into GPS tracking apps like Strava, but I would recommend it to share great walks. Anyway blogging like this is probably seen as ‘old school‘ as well – trying to steer clear the virtual bear pit that is often social media – but given how ancient and essential car-free walking is being a bit old school works for me!