Walking Festivals - Working better together
Outcomes of a meeting that took place in Moffat in November 2009.

Present:

Alan Krumholds	Midlothian	Ros Large	FCS
John Pope	Midlothian	Will Huckerby	FCS
Jo Cooke	Midlothian	Simon Pilpel	S Lanarks Council
Douglas Wright	Peebles	Adrienne McGeechan	S Lanarks Council
Gill Simpson	Peebles	Keith Robeson	S Borders Council
Gavin Graham	Langholm	Karen Morley	D&G Council
Dr Mike Tinker	Langholm	David Clyne	D&G Council
Geoff Kitt	Moffat	Tom Henry	D&G Council
Graham Platt	Dalbeattie	John Henderson	Walking Support
Joan Mitchell	Newton Stewart	John Sellers	Southern Uplands Partnership
Giles Etherington	Borders	Flora McDowall	Southern Uplands Partnership
Mike Baker	Borders	Pip Tabor	Southern Uplands Partnership
Drew Moyes	Carrick Way

Apologies:

Tom Tokely	Yetholm	Stuart Grant	Haltwhistle
Sarah Mathieson	Borders	Shone Hendry	Keilder
Kitty Bruce-Gardyne	Learmont Mckenzie	Andrew Panter	SNH
Dave Holland	Coniston	Chris Miles	SNH
Marjorie Baillie	Haltwhistle	Ros Hill	Glenkens
Jill McKay	E Lothian

Brief presentations were heard from the Langholm Walking festival, from the ‘Walkers are Welcome’ scheme and from Dr Joan Mitchell on the new tourism structure in Dumfries & Galloway – Destination D&G.  Some lessons learnt by the recent Borders Festival were also shared.

Key issues that came out of these presentations included:
Festivals can be at different scales and have different objectives.  Langholm has a small budget and aims to promote Langholm as a place to visit and explore during the 3 day event of 13 walks, which fills about 200 walk places.  The Borders has a 9 day event with over 50 walks, 750 walk places filled and for 2009 and 2010 has a large promotion budget.

Funding for the Langholm event now comes largely from local businesses with some Challenge Funding secured.  Experience suggests that bought advertising is not effective and they now rely on word-of-mouth.

Key to their success is making the event as friendly as possible.  They provide walkers with excellent teas (paid for from the walk fee) and aim for a high return rate.

The Borders event is seeking to attract a (slightly) younger audience than that which has predominated in recent years and more people from outwith the region.

In D&G, local businesses have moved to establish a new organisation, Destination D&G, which will seek to promote D&G and encourage networking between businesses on a geographical or themed basis; walking will be one such theme.  Relations with VisitScotland will be maintained, with the DD&G taking on some of the role of the old Tourist Boards.  Several themes and some geographic areas will benefit greatly from working closely with neighbouring areas such as Ayrshire, S Lanarks, the Scottish Borders and Cumbria.

Geoff Kitt explained the thinking behind the ‘Walkers are Welcome’ (www.walkersarewelcome.org.uk) scheme which is seeking to encourage communities to establish themselves as grassroots walking centres.  The number of registered communities is growing and it is hoped that the Southern Uplands will, in time, become a prominent ‘Walkers are Welcome’ region; this would go some way to selling the region as a walking destination.

The rest of the meeting was made up of three workshops looking at specific components of running a walking festival

• Pre-planning
• The walks
• Marketing

The following is a summary of the points made.

Pre-event
Agree aims and objectives.  These may vary from holding a free walking-event – primarily intended to get local people out for a healthy walk through to a major component of a local regeneration strategy aimed at drawing visitors to an area for economic gain.

Set budgets/ resources and dates.  Give a long lead-in to allow plenty of time for promotion.  Ideally events need to be ready to promote in January or February.

Don’t duplicate dates if at all possible (check the festival diary dates below!).  Every effort should be made to plan events as far apart as possible, this will give the area a good spread of events over several months and offer the opportunity for gaining more publicity.

Decide on whether to charge for walks and how to cost them.  Providing them for free is clearly going to require external funding/subsidy.  Charging the full cost (including the cost of organisation, insurance, buses, booking, registration, etc) may make them excessively expensive.  Some festivals have a set rate per walk with an additional fee where a bus is involved.  Others use a sliding scale depending on the length and cost of the walk.  Clients may ask how the cost is derived. The 2009 Borders system included a registration fee and this was very unpopular so will not be repeated.

The role of private sector is an interesting one.  At present it is hard for them to compete as the cost they would have to charge for a walk would be easily under-cut by walks led by volunteers.  However, some festivals are trying to involve private companies in the festival programme.

Identify elements of the event:

• Walk leaders and back-markers (and reserves plus helpers)
• Routes – how many over how many days?
• Who else needs to be involved (Mountain Rescue, caterers, bus companies etc)?
• Can Council departments help (eg Paths to Health, Access Officers, Rangers)?

Select walk routes – ensure a range of levels from strenuous to easy.

Ensure that the process for risk-assessments being undertaken is agreed and adhered to.  Walk leaders must agree to check the route shortly before the event.   It was noted that some attendees felt quite strongly that risk assessment demands were becoming too great.

Ensure walk leaders have appropriate training/experience.  Councils may be able to provide training courses, for example in first aid or leadership skills.  It was recognised that this may be a sensitive issue for some (e.g. experienced leaders) but, all accepted that properly introduced could only ensure a higher quality and safer experience for all.  It was noted that Newton Stewart uses the services of the local Mountain Rescue group as leaders for its walks.

Start-points.  Some festivals publicise a start point and walkers have to make their own way to this point.  This requires adequate car-parking (which can be problematic) but avoids the need for buses.  Others use a centre from which walks start and/or finish and buses to take people to start points or to collect from end points.

Provide leaders with guidance documents. There are several versions of leaders notes freely available (these will be posted on the sup website as they become available).

Consider booking systems. Some festivals use very basic system – telephone booking only.  Others use fairly sophisticated on-line systems which are expensive but which allow development of valuable mailing lists and other marketing opportunities.  The administration for complex systems needs to be considered.  Also note that many people do not like on-line systems so a telephone or paper system needs to be available.  Some festivals outsource booking to third-parties.

Registration centres make management of walkers easier but need to be in an appropriate location, with plenty of parking, toilets and, ideally, refreshment facilities close by.

Tired walkers appreciate refreshment and good quality tea and cakes seem to be expected!  Langholm make this a major component and they fund the provision of tea and cakes from a portion of the walk-fee.

The Borders Festival offered massage (provided by local trainees) at the end of walks and this was very well received.

Marketing
General external advertising is expensive therefore target it where it is most effective.  Good post-event evaluation can help identify where people heard of the event and thus where adverts worked.

Consider joint advertising – pooling minimal budgets may allow space to be bought in key publications, but again need to ensure it is going to be effective.

Joint circulation of fliers may allow reduced costs and producing a joint flier with details of all events may be cost-effective.

Marketing of each others events by sending out each-others dates, links to each-others websites and possibly fliers will be much cheaper and may be more effective.

Ensuring there are links to each others websites is essential, would require minimal co-ordination and would ensure that all sites are better placed on various ‘search engines’.  Sites could also provide links to the ‘Walkers are Welcome’ website.

Using shared downloadable pdf files for everyone to use would save people time and facilitate sharing of evaluation data.  It was suggested that VisitScotland and SUP work together to develop a generic evaluation form that could be added-to by individual groups.  This would then allow regional analysis of the results from all festival feedback and this in turn should allow better future targeting of marketing effort.

Hold regular meetingsof the walking festival groups (such as this one) to maintain co-ordination.

Sell the fact that the Southern Uplands has fantastic walking opportunities and room for lots more people!  This might be done through getting articles (for free!) in the Sunday supplements, national press, BBC and in the walking press.

Running the Festival.
Remember – walkers are customers and they must go away from the event having had a really good time! Word-of-mouth is the best advertising.  It is therefore very important that everyone concerned is reminded of this whether they be a walk leader, back-marker, walk registration worker, bed and breakfast manager or bus driver!

Some Festivals make a lot of the consistency of events – having the same walk leaders year after year so that people know exactly what to expect.  This is harder when festivals move around but the quality of the experience needs to be maintained from year to year.

Walk Leaders need to be competent.  They are in charge and must understand their responsibilities.  There is good guidance available for leaders and this should be made available.  Every walk needs to have a back-marker and additional help wherever possible, especially on longer walks where it is possible that some people may need to be escorted off the hill before the end.

All walks must have been recently checked and the risk assessment completed by the Leader.  It is not enough for someone to say they know the walk from the past.  Things change, paths get blocked, new tracks get made.  The Leader may have to deal with poor weather and low visibility so they must be very familiar with the route.

They also need to ensure they and their walkers have the correct gear including first-aid kits, mobile phones (with emergency numbers) etc.

Take an ‘expert’ along if the leader does not have specialist knowledge of history or wildlife.  This can add to the experience for the visitor and could be a specific selling point for the walks programme.

It is vital that walks do not get ‘strung-out’.  The pace should be set by the slowest walker. Where there is concern about the ability of any walker to do the walk, the leader should ask and if doubts remain it is up to them to determine whether to accept them on the walk.

Ensure that walks are as well described as possible.  Grading (e.g. using the Ramblers Association scale) can help – but it is also vital to give an accurate idea of the amount and steepness of climbs and descents and the overall distance.  Experience shows that well described walks are more popular than those with just a start and finish point given.

Provide good information to participants on everything else they need to know. What to bring (gear, packed-lunch, maps, etc), meeting point, duration, end point, etc.

Risk assessments were discussed at some length.  Some do rigorous assessments, others only do ‘mental’ ones.  The consensus was that a paper form is very advisable.  This can be based on a generic form – requiring tick-boxes and minimal text to be added.  The feeling was that if something ever did go wrong it would be vital to be able to demonstrate that risks had been assessed and minimised.  The RA should ideally be undertaken by the Walk Leader.

The importance of planning the route was stressed.  Lunch stops should be considered and ‘comfort breaks’ should be planned, not forgetting the need for sensitivity regarding the needs of both sexes.  If the weather does change – the possible ‘escape routes’ need to be considered and everyone involved in the running of the event needs to be aware of where these are.

Most walkers at walking festivals prefer the longer walks and this emphasises that many like a challenge and several festivals include a challenge walk in their programme.  These require additional thought and resources (marshals etc).

Key actions

ACTION	RESPONSIBILITY
Exchange contacts and website addresses and ensure they are ‘cross-linked’	All
Create a shared evaluation system	SUP/VisitScotland
Consider further the exchange of databases	All/SUP
Share publicity/swop fliers	All
Swop final reports to allow sharing of lessons	All
Share dates of 2010 festivals	All
Seek publicity in the UK press emphasising the quality and range of experiences available through walking and walking events in S Scotland	All (SUP/VisitScotland)