WALK LONDON London borough walks (on London borough websites)
Walking is one of the easiest ways to make a journey - it costs nothing, it's good for your health and it's availably locally. So you might hope that London's borough websites would feature collateral encouraging their residents to head outside and enjoy all their area has offer on foot. Some nice walks for people to follow, perhaps, past sites of interest or across scenic landscapes. If the boroughs don't do it, who else will?
So I've been scouring the websites of all 33 London boroughs to see what walks they have to recommend. I've hunted for trails to follow, leaflets to download, circuits to trace, all specific to the borough, all for free. Some borough websites have the lot whereas others make little or no effort to encourage walkers to explore their leafy acres. I've awarded stars according to online route provision and knocked up a league table of walk-friendly boroughs.
I first did this back in 2008, then again in 2012, then again in 2016, then again at the start of 2021. Four years on, the majority of these borough websites have upgraded. A few have merely reorganised, breaking previous links. Others have substantially restructured, adding or pruning former pages and making themselves a lot more mobile-friendly. And a depressing number have dumbed down, deleting all the interesting stuff and concentrating solely on council services.
So I thought I'd update my previous list, for those of you who fancy spending some time exploring your part of the city on foot. To name and shame (or praise and cheer), I've included any changes since 2021 in brackets.
Here's my borough by borough London guide to free downloadable walks. Who'll spur you outdoors for a bit of healthy leisure and heritage, and whose website teams still need a bit of a kick?
Nothing about walks or walking, because these websites are repositories of information about council services (no star boroughs) Bexley(↓4), Kensington & Chelsea(↓3), Lambeth
It's the first time I've awarded five stars to four boroughs, so congratulations to Bromley, Hillingdon, Southwark and Waltham Forest.
Bromley has some of London's best countryside on its doorstep and has created some top-notch rambling resources to help explore it. These come highly recommended. Southwark scores highly for devising a themed walk beginning at each of its libraries, and Hillingdon and Waltham Forest have reached the upper echelons by adding to their previous four-star selections. If you're ever at a loss for something to do locally, dig deep.
The City of London used to be firmly five star but I've downgraded them for concealment reasons. Most of their excellent walking resources remain on the City website but only if you already know where to look, because the official walking page now redirects punters to the jazzier City of London website where everything's more commercial. Of the remaining four star boroughs, Barnet's six Healthy Heritage Walks are the most recent and come with a choice of accompanying podcast or transcript. Lewisham's unusual approach is to encourage everyone to walk to Blackheath from wherever they live.
Once you drop below four stars the offerings get less exciting. But well done to Brent for noticing that routes without maps aren't much use, hence by restoring these they go back up a place. Kingston have managed to put together three colourful walks by partnering with their local university, hence they spring up from zero stars to three. Hammersmith & Fulham's audience is people who hardly walk at all, so don't head there for anything meaty.
At the two star level councils are essentially abdicating responsibility for walking resources to external sources. Enfield and Haringey have dropped a star since 2021 by doing just that. I'm particularly ashamed that the Tower Hamlets web team have somehow retained the summary highlights of their walks while deleting the associated pdfs, making a long-standing collection of excellent leisure downloads utterly useless overnight.
Similar torching of resources has occurred in Kensington & Chelsea, and especially Bexley which has somehow managed to plummet from four stars to none at all. A third of London boroughs fall into my one- and zero-star categories because their websites are too keen on being functional instead of inspiring. The dilution and impoverishment of council websites has been a regular theme on this blog, and is one of the reasons why I revisit these lists every few years.
If you're fortunate to live in (or next to) one of the four- or five-star boroughs, maybe bookmark a few of these local walks and walking pages for later use. Even if this weekend's looking much too hot, getting out and about is always an excellent way to explore London and keep active at the same time.
WALK LONDON
