Thornbury Wayfinders

I have been asked to say a few words about Thornbury Wayfinders.

Thornbury Wayfinders – previously known as Thornbury Afoot is a steering group dedicated to achieving and maintaining Walkers are Welcome status for Thornbury.

Well – we’ve achieved Walkers are Welcome status by getting Thornbury accredited as a Walkers are Welcome Town by the national Walkers are Welcome organisation. So now our job is to maintain our new status.

What does that mean?

According to our constitution, our first aim is To promote “recreational walking” for the benefit of residents, visitors and the tourist economy in the Thornbury area.

That needs to be unpacked.

First – Why “recreational walking”?

When, as footpath warden, I reported a broken bridge on the Streamside Walk near Manorbrook School – I was promoting safe routes to school – rather than recreational walking.

And when, as a Town Councillor, I bang on about the terrible path alongside the Gloucester Road as it approaches the Plain,  I am promoting the rights of young mothers and disabled people and others who use the path to get to the shops.

But recreational walking is important for two reasons.

First, as an individual, the right to freely roam around is one the fundamental rights of a citizen of the United Kingdom.

Secondly, Organised Recreational Walking can be a source of income, both for businesses that serve the walking community and for volunteering organisations that want to help to maintain the footpath network.

This is where the Walkers are Welcome network comes in – because the individual Walkers are Welcome towns and villages support each other by promoting each other’s events and their members travel to attend each other’s festivals.

For example, last Friday, I led a walk from Thornbury Castle to Chepstow Castle as part of the Chepstow Walking Festival. The Chepstow Mayor, Tudor Griffiths and his wife took part in this walk – we were seen off in the coach in Chepstow by their deputy Mayor, and we were greeted at Thornbury Castle by our Mayor James Murray.

On the walk I spoke to people from Chepstow – but also from Wotton, from Chipping Sodbury, from Bristol and from Oxford – and most of us piled into the Three Tuns in Chepstow at the end.

When we return the compliment next year, it will be Thornbury businesses that reap the benefit.

I was wearing a Bristol Walking Festival T-shirt from ten years ago – and one of the walkers remarked that they didn’t know Bristol had a Walking Festival (It’s all May!) This is because Bristol is too big to be a Walkers are Welcome Town – so it doesn’t get advertised on the Walkers are Welcome network.

We will be putting on our Festival next year – probably at the end of February.

But There is more to Thornbury Wayfinders than that.

So Who Are we?

Thornbury Wayfinders is first and foremost a community group.

Our first duty is to benefit the citizens of Thornbury through our activities and only afterwards to benefit visitors to help support businesses – also to the benefit of the citizens of Thornbury.

For this reason, a wide range of interests is represented in the Steering Group. The Town Council obviously , which appoints the Footpath Warden, the chamber of commerce, representing business, Sustainable Thornbury – supporting the natural environment, Thornbury Ramblers representing walkers particularly and Thornbury Running Club, because they use our footpaths as much as any one – Jigsaw and Krunch representing young people, Thornbury and District Museum representing our Historical heritage, Friends of Filnore Woods, who among other things maintain a section of the Jubilee Way and Trust Green representing the people in the new housing  at Cleve Wood.

As we move forward, we will need to include other groups. 

For example, one of my pet projects is the Streamside Walks, which I have linked together as an accessible circular path – marked up as a Community Forest Path. 

I would like the streams to be better looked after – which would involve South Glos – but might also involve advice from Thornbury in Bloom and/or the Litterpickers. There are nearly half a dozen schools linked by the streamside paths, which are used as safe routes to school and have in the past used the streams for school projects. There are households and some businesses and organisations, which are directly linked to the streamside paths. Also the Nuclear Power station is looking for a volunteering project.

The surface of the path is not as accessible as it should be – so we are looking to organise an event for users of mobility scooters and electric wheelchairs to highlight places where improvements should be prioritised. This will mean that another set of people need to be involved. 

This approach is called Asset Based Community Development or ABCD, Which was pioneered at a University in Illinois and has been adopted by some parts of South Gloucestershire Council. 

We have a physical asset, which is the streamside walks, but we also have organisational and individual assets , which can be brought to bear to improve things for the community. 

South Glos probably owns most of the Streamside Walks, but it doesn’t have the resources to look after it for the community, so elements within the community need to get together to make things happen. 

This is what makes a place function as a community, rather than a collection of discrete units.

One problem is – it is quite difficult for people or groups to actually talk to each other.

I was made aware of how this might be remedied at the Mayor’s awards, an event of which I was deeply suspicious. 

My name came out of the hat and I decided to attend, because I knew several of the people who were to receive awards and I didn’t want to appear to snub them.

However, the real value of the event was not in the people I already knew, but in the people I met, who I didn’t already know. 

I met people from Thornbury Rugby Club, whose ground is just outside Thornbury in Rockhampton. It is an ideal place to start a walk to explore the events in the Poaching Affray of 1816 which involved men from Lower Morton and further afield who disputed the right of Colonel Berkeley to stop them shooting pheasants on his land – a sorry tale that led some of them to the gallows and others to Australia.

The founding fathers of the club sound as if their families could have been involved on one side or the other – and when I spoke to people from the club they sounded happy to host us.

I also met women footballers and I shared an umbrella on the way home with a woman who had won an award for founding a women’s running group, who I had previously known only as the owner of a dog called Doris.

The point being, you rarely know the hidden talents of those you meet casually in the street.

For example, on Saturday, I learnt that a woman with a shop on the High Street who puts out water for passing dogs is also an expert in community development from her previous job and is also an occasional wheelchair user who is very interested in helping to get an event together involving mobility scooters etc. on the potentially accessible Streamside Path.

This event also has the potential to be an opportunity to share assets in physical, mental and organisational resources to make Thornbury a better place. 

I am tempted to use the term Synergy, although that is a bit of a modern buzzword. It stands for the obvious fact that groups are more powerful if they work together. 

The Streamside Walk is an excellent place to start. It links up many of the elements of the Thornbury Community Nature Reserve, and much of the work to set it up has already been completed. 

The route as it stands links  the older estates built in the sixties and seventies with the older part of Thornbury and already attracts walking groups from outside the area into the town. As does the Museum’s Heritage Walk.

Linking the Streamside Walk to Sustainable Thornbury’s Biodiversity Ring also links in the newer estates beyond Butt Lane and Morton Way. I shall be leading two walks in May that do just that. The first at 10-30 on 10th, from near the Swan in conjunction with VE day (we will be visiting some war graves on the way) and the second on the 31st at 10 from the Anchor at Morton Bridge.

However, the Streamside Walk needs Friends – so volunteers are needed.

On another subject, we are experimenting with linking walking with the Severn Vale Arts Trail – a Thursday Walk with the U3A Walking Group. And there is an exhibition about moving through the landscape at 71 High Street from Friday to Monday on the Arts Trail.

Have a word afterwards if you would like to join in.

Thank you.