Oxfordshire Area Ramblers

Health Walks are short organised walks, led by trained volunteers from the local community. Designed with health in mind they can improve both physical and mental health by offering a safe, friendly and supported environment where everyone can walk at their own pace and not be left behind to walk alone. There is also opportunity to socialise with refreshments at the end of the walk! Inactivity is as big a cause of heart disease as smoking and joining a Health Walk can contribute towards increasing your level of activity. Walking for half an hour five times a week can help to:

1. Halve the risk of coronary heart disease (heart attack);
2. Maintain an ideal weight and help with weight loss;
3. Improve co-ordination, flexibility and muscle strength, which can help to reduce the risk of falls for older people.
4. Reduce the risk of developing Type II diabetes;
5. Cut the risk of suffering a stroke by one third;
6. Ease depression and anxiety;
7. Help to reduce high blood pressure.

In addition, walking can make you feel good, give you more energy and help you sleep better.

Health Walks are perfect for beginners, for those who would like to become more active or perhaps lack the confidence and knowledge about where to walk. Many of the walks have a variety of routes and offer the opportunity to move onto more challenging walks as fitness increases. However, there will always be a short, unchallenging walk on offer for those who need it and all walks are supported by volunteer walk leaders.

There are various local walks around the county and we are continually looking to expand the walking programme, but as walks are primarily led by volunteers we are limited by the number of volunteers we have! So, if you enjoy walking and meeting people and have a little spare time why not think about being trained as a volunteer walk leader?

Current schemes are all over the south east; to find out more visit: Walking for Health
For local schemes click on "Regular local walks".

This will be the SHORT WALKS from our local database

This site is under construction,

please explore it if you wish, but be aware that Martin is experimenting with it.

Through the site are many pages with content copied from the current site. In most of these the hyperlinks have not [yet] been updated to link within this new site, so you will generally need to use the primary navigation bars to get about.

On this page there are two listings of local walks (led by Oxfordshire groups). The one of the left has a space missing in the distance walked, but otherwise seems OK. The one on the right is an attempt to get round that problem, however I often find it empty.

For all pages of the site the screen can be thought of as being three columns wide; the central one being twice as wide as the outside two. When using a narrower screen (such as an ipad) the outer columns are moved to below the central column, and the menu style changes. This will also happen on a large screen if you use a narrow window. 

Within Oxfordshire there are groups centred on different areas. All welcome members wherever they live. Non members are also welcome to try one or two walks before deciding whether to join.

Some groups organise social events and trips away, as well as walks programmes.