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SlowWays: walking routes from Winchester

SlowWays from Winchester

Did you ever try a walking routes from Winchester to one of the neighboring towns or villages? You can reach Romsey, Eastleigh, King’s Somborne, New Alresford, Bishop’s Waltham or Micheldever on foot – a great challenge for summer 2021.

SlowWays is a project aimed at creating and mapping over 7000 walking routes across the whole of Great Britain. Dan Raven-Ellison started it during lockdown and recruited a team of over 700 volunteers to map a detailed, national walking network. The network currently covers over hundred thousand kilometres-fairly impressive!

We had a look at the routes available from Winchester:

to New Alresford

The route called WINNEW actually has two alternative paths that mainly follows the river Itchen. They diverge at Itchen Abbas towards New Alresford. Both routes are 16km in length and are fairly easy to walk. Being close to the river Itchen most of the time is the main appeal of this route. It covers the extreme north-west corner of the South Downs National Park (see map of the National Park).

On walkWINCHESTER just over half of the route is covered by walk#2 and walk#6 in more detail. We have actually completed both of the routes suggested by SlowWays in smaller chunks, but haven’t published these, yet.

River Itchen
River Itchen

to King’s Somborne

The KINWIN route describes the first part of the Clarendon Way. A separate route from King’s Somborne to Salisbury (SALKIN) depicting the second part. Both parts can be done in single day. They involve a number of ascents and descents along the Hampshire countryside.

KINWIN is covered in detail in loops 1, 2, 3 and 4 of our Clarendon Way series.

King's Somborne
King’s Somborne

Explore routes from Winchester

If you have already done the 12 walks challenge and the Clarendon Way, exploring the walking routes to our neighboring towns and villages is a great challenge for this summer. Have a look at the SlowWays map to start with. The map covers the whole of Great Britain and you can also use it on a staycation.

SlowWays journey planner (shows all routes)

Additionally, you may even want to update the information on SlowWays and add alternative routes or attempt an even longer route. In any case, it’s a good excuse to #getoutside.

1 thought on “SlowWays: walking routes from Winchester”

  1. Slow ways is a fab project. I was one of the volunteers during the first lockdown and produced lots of routes including a couple of local ones.

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