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Coventry and Sunderland launches
We hope you may have noticed our launches in both Coventry and Sunderland.
Please pass on details to anyone you know who lives or works there (or visits).
Try out a few walks:
Sunderland
Southwick to Royal Sunderland Hospital
St Peter's Metro to Roker Park ('less busy' route)
Coventry
Train Station to Museum of British Road Transport
Spon Street to Coventry Cathedral
Left, right, left, right - what is the politics of urban walking?
Are the users of walkit.com predominantly a bunch of Guardian-reading liberal lefties? Or perhaps they're Mail-reading neocons?
We could hazard a guess, but maybe unwise to jump to conclusions. The beauty of urban walking is that nearly all of us do it – but we don't all drive, we don't all take the bus or train, we don't all bike, and we don't all fly.
Even for the most confirmed car driver “walking isn't a lost art: one must, by some means, get to the garage” (thanks to Evan Esar).
Does walking in any way define your politics, or politics define your walking?
I walk therefore I vote Labour? Or I vote Liberal Democrat therefore I walk? (Or I bike therefore I vote Tory?)
OK, not quite as simple as that. And anyway, we hope there's a broad political church of walkit.com users.
Of course the promotion of walking (and any whiff of concomitant constraints being put on other road users) can be intensely political. But how party political is it?
Has 12 years of Labour been good news for urban walkers? Two years of the SNP been good for Scottish walkers? Does Boris's first year look promising compared to Ken's eight year reign?
If you've got a good walking environment in your town or city, it can often be a proxy for somewhere that is safe, neighbourly, vibrant, clean, green, prosperous and healthy.
Who's good at delivering on that agenda?
London tube too hot to handle?
Transport for London has released this 'heat' map of Underground lines in zones one and two between 1600 and 1900 on 28/29 July 2008 – the hottest day of the year.
So on parts of the Central, Bakerloo and Victoria lines in particular you were being gently baked. And that's the average during those hours – it will have peaked at more than that. Apparently this is also the platform temperature, so imagine the on-train temp when everyone was crammed in at rush hour.
Doesn't really bear thinking about.
Our response? Too obvious to state…
'Touching the stairs'
Thought this was rather inspired.
From the people at Green Thing.
On those rare occasions when you can't face walking outside, give it a go inside.
Makes our attempt at a promotional video (from quite a while back, in our defence) look rather…a-hem… It started out as a sort of horror pastiche (think 28 Days Later), but then we got cold feet, so it ended being neither one thing nor the other…
Why are we running a car ad?!
You may have noticed we're running some ads for the Toyota Prius.
Hardly a Hummer, but questionable for walkit.com to be running a car ad at all (even for a Toyota 'Pious'…)?
Quite a while ago we sparked a bit of a debate on Facebook about whether we should be accepting any such ads, and the consensus seemed to be 'go for it'.
But what do you think?
walkit.com recommended by Rough Guides
We have been specially recommended in the new Rough Guides book Clean Breaks: 500 New Ways to See the World
The book highlights “500 places across the globe which will inspire people to see the world in a new light, selecting unusual holidays and alternative ways to travel which make a real difference to the lives of local people and the planet”.
