A momentous day.

Wellness Walks was 'born' somewhere in those awful lock downs of 2020, slowly I started taking people out for a Walk and a Talk, a thing I knew from my own battles with abyss could and would help. Almost from the first walk it was clear there was much more demand than any one person could handle, more than any small team that I might aspire to employ could ever deal with.
Early in 2021 we became a social enterprise, started to try and navigate the third sector landscape, to find a way to cover our bills whilst doing some good. And it was tough, as tough as starting any enterprise ever is.
But.
One thing held true, pushed us on, kept us going. Almost without fail every single person we've explained Wellness Walks to has replied with (some variation of) the same four words; "what a great idea".  Our goal from day one has been simple: we want as many people as possible to be able to go on a Wellness Walk in as many places as possible. It's been how we make that happen that we've slowly been working out.

Today it began.
7* Wellness Walk Volunteer Leaders began their training, they cover an area from Derbyshire to Dumfries. We've 3 other cohorts starting training over the coming months and we now have a fairly amazing (imho) program we can offer to communities across the uk.
Today they've been excited, nervous, keen and kind. Everything we've hoped for. Karl and Tom who do stuff with us already made the effort to join us for coffee and offer support and mentoring, plans are already being made. I'm quietly confident they'll be ace, they'll all do a lot of good.  Two have come through our other programs, what a journey for them, but all of them bring something more.
Even without all the other discussions we're trying to start, no matter how hard finding funding is, right now we know that over the next twelve months we'll deliver more than 500 Wellness Walks thay are totally free to anyone feeling low. That's 10 a week, that's simply stunning.
Its going to be hard, worthwhile things often are. But. It's begun and it feels fabulous


*they should have been 8 but one dropped out at 22:30 last night. At first I was annoyed, hurt, frustrated. We had 90 applicants for these 8 places. But. Someone special told me it was a learning point. I've learnt to let it go, it's a negative, we made a plan to make it less likely in future, that's a positive.