We all want to spend a bit more time in nature and away from our screens - perhaps the summer school holidays is the perfect time to go about it! But where are you planning to head to? Well if you're stuck for some inspiration, Ordnance Survey has put together this bumper list of their top walks UK to take on with the whole family.
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00:00 Yeah, I mean, one of my favourite places is, I live on the South Coast, so I'm lucky to
00:06 have the dramatic coastline. And one of my favourites is the Isle of Purbeck. So it's
00:11 beautiful around the Dorset coastline.
00:14 I'm blessed to live in the centre in Birmingham, in the centre of the country. So we're kind
00:18 of central to kind of just go out, up, down, left and right. And you know what I found,
00:24 Lauren, there are so many places around me. If you live in Birmingham or the West Midlands,
00:28 you'll know this. There's a lot of parks in Birmingham, more than I even knew existed.
00:33 And we're trying to tick off all the different parks in our own region to start with. And
00:38 they are beautiful. And then we're going wider and wider and wider.
00:41 It seems like the school holidays have only just begun, but already nearly 50% of parents
00:46 said they're already running low on fun yet cheap ideas to keep their children busy each
00:51 day. That's according to new research from Ordnance Survey, which also highlighted that
00:56 a whopping 85% of parents are looking for low cost ways to keep their kids active during
01:01 the six weeks of summer. So why not combine the two? Catherine Mary, sports broadcaster,
01:06 Olympic bronze medalist and mum of two says she loves getting out and about with the whole
01:11 family in tow.
01:12 So many of us don't know what's in our own backyard sometimes, you know, there's a lot
01:16 going on. So yeah, some of those statistics were like, wow. But I, as a mother of two,
01:21 I can appreciate, and I am one of those 85% of parents that are always looking for low
01:25 cost ways to do things with my family.
01:27 OS has teamed up with Natural England and TV character, Shaun the Sheep, to create a
01:32 list of the top seven countryside walks around England and Wales this summer. They're in
01:37 Seven Sisters Country Park in East Sussex, Burritten in Hampshire, Bambrough in Northumberland,
01:42 Pembroke in Pembrokeshire, Sudley Castle in the Cotswolds, Tintagel in Cornwall and the
01:46 Lizard in Cornwall.
01:48 We tried to choose areas which were going to be accessible. We wanted to have circular
01:53 routes, ones that are not too long for little legs, because obviously children can wear
01:58 out quite quickly, and also ones that are near a national trail as well. So there's
02:03 lots of nice facilities around. So good car parking, a good visitor centre, with that
02:08 all important ice cream stop at the end.
02:11 It comes as part of National Map Reading Week, where OS is urging parents to get the kids
02:16 outdoors and into the great British countryside.
02:19 I'm a big, big, big advocate of being able to at least have the basic skills to read
02:24 a map, because I think we're very technology-based nowadays, aren't we? It's like, I don't
02:29 need a map, I've got it on my phone, I can drive here, I've got all these sat-nav things.
02:34 But what happens if that isn't the case at some point and you've got a bad signal
02:37 or you lose your phone? And I think learning to read a map and having the basic skills
02:42 is really, really important, because for many reasons it helps children develop the critical
02:51 skills as well, in terms of solving and planning. There's so many good reasons why map reading
02:58 skills are important, and at the top of that list for me is actually it's really good fun.