Walking

Choosing to walk instead of drive is one of the easiest ways to get active while helping to reduce carbon emissions in your local area.

Getting active in your daily life

Making trips to your local high street, shops, or library on foot is a simple way to introduce walking into your everyday life.

Changing the way you travel to work or school gives more opportunities to increase the amount of walking you do.

Commuting to work

You can make walking part of your daily commute to work. That could mean walking the full distance or splitting the journey between public transport and walking.

Your employer might offer a wellbeing allowance for you to buy items such as trainers or a fitness watch to encourage you to get active.

For resources that can help you champion walking at your workplace, visit Living Streets.

Active travel to school

Walking to and from school can improve children’s fitness and concentration, and help them feel more relaxed at the end of the day.

Our active travel to school page has information on initiatives and road safety training at our local schools to make walking, scooting, and cycling safer for families.

You can also find activities and resources in the parents and carers section of the Living Streets website.

Pedestrian friendly routes

We are creating and improving pedestrian and cycle routes to make it safer to travel and connect our communities. Some examples of changes across the area include:

• new footpaths and cycle lanes, and widened existing shared use paths along the A4174 ring road
• solar lighting trial and CCTV on sections of the Bristol and Bath railway path
• improvements to the shared-use route from Lyde Green to Emersons Green via Newlands Bridge
• removing and adjusting barriers, improving dropped kerbs and resurfaced paths in Yate to improve accessibility

Find out more about our active travel schemes.

Walking for leisure

If you are interested in walking in your free time, there are a variety of walking routes and trails that will get you out into nature. You can also explore our parks and open spaces.

Use the Countryside Code from GOV.UK for advice when visiting the countryside.

Find out more about walking routes and organised walks on our One You South Gloucestershire website, or discover special interest walks below.

Heritage walks and trails

Our heritage walks and trails page provides information on walks that allow you to discover history in South Gloucestershire.

Find out more on our heritage walks and trails page.

Wildlife walks

We have developed wildlife walking routes and bat audio trails to help you discover the wildlife in your local area.

Find out more on our wildlife walks page.

Orienteering and geocaching

Orienteering and geocaching are outdoor activities that allow walkers and runners to explore their local area while having fun.

We have orienteering trails in the Three Brooks nature reserve and in Warmley Forest.

Find out more on our orienteering and geocaching page.

Using public rights of way

Public rights of way are open to everyone at any time and give you the right to walk, ride a horse or cycle along certain routes. Some rights of way are open to vehicles.

More detailed information can be found on our public rights of way page.