I love exploring areas with a lot of footpaths that lead away from roads. This map aims to find the local authority districts with the highest proportion of “walkable” routes compared to “drivable” routes:

The technique used to generate the map is described in my post on off-road cycling density.

What is counted as “walkable”? Basically anything that you can legally walk on, that isn’t the pavement or a road:

  • Public Footpaths
  • Bridleways
  • Restricted Byways
  • “Tracks” where foot access is explicitly allowed
  • Byways Open to All Traffic (BOATs) [1]

What are the top districts for walking?

  1. High Peak - 2090
  2. Rossendale - 1948
  3. New Forest - 1930
  4. Ribble Valley - 1871
  5. Mole Valley - 1760

Note that Isles of Scilly has an anomalously high score of over 5000; the islands have lots of walking trails and very few roads. They are overall the best but they are such a small area and mess up the scale of the rest of the map, so have been omitted from the map.

And the bottom districts for walking?

  1. Slough - 252
  2. Wolverhampton - 277
  3. Knowsley - 287
  4. South Holland - 289
  5. Brent - 290

Now I really do need to get out and explore more of the UK!

[1] These are also open to vehicles, but in my experience are generally good walking routes.