…and breathe September is now behind us and we enter the twilight zone of October where we still have walkers but the numbers are much down. It allows us the opportunity to take a little rest and to get ahead on our winter projects which includes some new routes. Here’s a list of what we’re thinking of for next year: The Chilterns – although we have a lovely 3 day walk described as a Chiltern Ramble, we’ve been disappointed with uptake. So we’re going to look at leveraging the best parts of the Chiltern Way. The full walk is 180 miles long and is best described as a rectangular, rather than a circular walk. It may be that we can offer this in 2 parts over the next year or so. The Great West Way is any continuous walk from Bristol to London where we will leverage mostly the Kennet and Avon Canal as well as the Thames Path. We may opt to “straighten” some sections of the Thames Path to make it more direct. And then we plan to offer St Frideswide Way and the St James’ Way as a continuous pilgrimage walk from Oxford to Southampton via Reading. Aside from these we’re planning on a slightly different approach to our winter webinars. Over the last few years we’ve held webinars almost every week through the winter covering different walks. We’re frequently asked whether we record these – which we’ve never done – as people often have conflicts. So this year we’re thinking of recording the webinars and making them available on YouTube. However, so that we don’t lose the opportunity to chat with our walkers, we’re also thinking of having some kind of “open hour” where folks can call in during a certain time and ask questions. All will hopefully be revealed by the next newsletter. In the meantime there’s still a month to squeeze a walk in. October can be unpredictable. But it’s a good time to walk the lower reaches of the Thames Path as there’s minimal flood risk AND there are plenty of places to shelter if it rains. | 
