The Wales for Walking Initiative is a new campaign that has been launched recently at opening up more of Wales to walkers. Ramblers Cymru want to make it the best country in the world for walking, well that is certainly aiming high and at the official launch they certainly showed their intentions by producing a map of the country that covered a five-a-side football pitch. Wouldn’t want to pack that in my rucksack for a day trip!

The Welsh government is actually looking at increasing the areas of the countryside where people would be allowed to walk and a full report on this is due in the next few weeks. The hope of the outdoors community is that it will be a system very similar to that introduced in Scotland. It is hoped that it will create opportunities in connecting everyone with the areas in there own locality, creating connectivity between communities and so attracting walkers in from other areas.

It is also seen as a chance of introducing more people to walking and the health benefits it can provide, as well as reducing the number the number of short car journeys being undertaken. The Welsh assembly is looking at three main areas; to increase access to the outdoors, both in urban and rural areas; to improve the current public path network, to increase the amount of land available for allotments and community gardening.

Well it should be very interesting to see the Welsh approve on this issue, as it could mean that we end up with three sets of access laws in England, Scotland and Wales. Although they will be basically the same there will be differences which we will, as walkers, need to be aware of so that we don’t annoy any landowners in the future. Lets wait and see what happens.