I wanted to design a website that gives everybody all the information they needed in one place. But Julia had a day job to continue, which at the time was more walking programmes and working with the lovely Matt Baker on Countryfile so she let me loose to develop our baby and pull together all of the organisations, charities, and experts in to an online hub of free information for everyone to enjoy.
Copyright: Radio Times
One of the areas we were determined to factor into everything we do at The Outdoor Guide was accessibility. Debbie North joined The Outdoor Guide and is now the ambassador for accessTOG. Our mission is to ensure that accessibility is woven through everything we do; and whilst we understand that trekking coast to coast or squelching through the sodden tops of the Howgills is not for everyone, except Debbie! We are determined to uncover hidden gems in the countryside for people with disabilities. We have a whole section on The Outdoor Guide called wheel friendly walks, which covers buggys, bikes and mobility scooters, hotels and eateries all suitable for various degrees of mobility.
ITV then approached Julia to make more walking programmes, they ended out to be Britain’s Best Walks and Best Walks with A View. ITV gave us their blessing and said that we could feature all the key information from the programmes on our website, which would be fully supported by the trendy Social Media platforms.
Over four million people tuned in to watch and the walks were downloaded thousand of times. The hotel phones were ringing off the hook for bookings, the gear and gadgets ogled at and the response overall was fantastic. To date the walks on the website have been downloaded via our ViewRanger App over 20 thousand times and we even won an award for the most downloaded walks on their platform!
So moving forward the TOG team are back on the road filming for the website and we want to encourage more like minded people to get in touch with us so that we can share our outdoor stories.
Find it. Share it. Live it.