If you love walking, I highly recommend joining a walking group.

I’ve been a member of a local walking group through Meetup for a number of years and it’s given me the opportunity to go on many walks which I might otherwise never have heard of.

If you’re not familiar with Meetup, you can search for and join a group in your area and once you’ve become a member you get notified if a host posts a walk. You can then sign up to join a walk and if it’s full (there’s always a limit so numbers don’t get too big), you are put on a waiting list. My experience is that closer to the walk date people tend to pull out, so you can usually guarantee a space will become available.

One of the benefits of being in a walking group is that it’s far easier to go on a walk if someone else organises it! It’s really easy to say you’re going to go for a walk by yourself or with a friend and then not get around to it! But with a walking group you have no excuses as someone else has organised it and you can’t let them down!

Often there are different grades of walks posted so you can choose between easy, medium or challenging. This means you can ease yourself into walking when you’re first starting out rather than pushing yourself too hard and suffering afterwards!

Being in a walking group has also given me the opportunity to meet people I might otherwise never have crossed paths with, and because you share a common interest there’s always something to talk about. I have found out about all sorts of walks, both locally and internationally, and this has directly led to my walking in Spain and Italy.

So if you love walking but don’t have anyone to walk with, I definitely recommend joining a walking group.

Happy walking!