An hour’s walk kicks-off long before anyone sets foot on a path. There’s the journey to the meeting point, the question of whether you’ll keep up and, if you’re going on your own, the business of introducing yourself to a group of strangers. A place can be close to home and still feel a long way away.
In Nidderdale, some of the people who will help with that first hour are being recruited now. From January 2027, volunteers are set to join trained leaders on guided walks across the National Landscape. Their job is to talk to people, help the sessions run smoothly and make it easier for someone new to come back a second time.
“A friendly conversation and some encouragement can help someone feel more comfortable about joining a walk or trying something new,” says Ben Winthrop, the local Natural Health Service coordinator. “We are looking for volunteers who can listen, put people at ease and help everyone feel welcome.”
It’s a modest-sounding brief for a programme with a much bigger question behind it. What could change if the organisations that look after North Yorkshire’s countryside also helped people use it as part of the support they receive for their health and wellbeing?
The North York Moors Trust was already working with GPs and social prescribers on a local nature prescription. Its calendar offered small things people could try close to home, such as listening for birdsong or paying attention to what they could smell on a walk. The idea could work in a backyard as readily as in a national park.
The Trust now leads the Natural Health Service for North Yorkshire with the North York Moors and Yorkshire Dales National Park authorities and the Howardian Hills and Nidderdale National Landscapes. The partnership adds structured group sessions and training for people working in health and community services. Participants can make a personal plan for keeping up activities or joining something locally once the course ends.
This is green social prescribing. A health or community professional can help someone find a suitable activity and make a connection with the people running it. Depending on what’s available locally, that could mean gardening, conservation work or a supported walk. The referral and the welcome at the other end matter as much to whether someone takes part as the activity on offer.
Northern areas helped test how that might work in practice. Humber and North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw, and Greater Manchester were among seven areas in England’s national programme. Their involvement brought health teams into contact with organisations already running outdoor activities in their communities.
A 2021 systematic review led by researchers at the University of York found that structured outdoor activities such as gardening and green exercise could improve aspects of adult mental health, including depressive symptoms, anxiety and mood. The studies varied in quality and in what they asked people to do. The authors found less evidence for physical-health outcomes.
England’s 2024 programme evaluation offers a different view, from people who took part in services on the ground. Among 1,267 participants with happiness scores recorded before and after taking part, 72% reported an improvement. Among 534 with paired life-satisfaction scores, 70% reported an improvement. Those percentages describe the people with both scores recorded. The evaluation had no comparison group, so it cannot tell us how much of the change was due to the programme or how much would have happened anyway.
That makes improved mood and wellbeing reasonable outcomes for a local service to look for. It also makes it worth asking what people found helpful. Was it moving more, having a reason to leave the house, spending time somewhere green, or getting to know someone over several weeks? A programme can offer all of those things at once. If it wants to know whether people feel less isolated, or keep going outdoors after the sessions finish, it needs to ask those questions directly and follow up.
Nidderdale’s volunteer call gives a glimpse of how that might work. The ten-week courses starting in February are for people with mild to moderate mental or physical health conditions. Sessions will include walking and mindfulness, with locations chosen around the needs and abilities of each group. They’ll also help people build confidence using public transport and finding their way on longer walks.
That detail about buses deserves its place in the programme. Confidence can make a journey easier to attempt. Whether there’s a bus home, whether the meeting point is accessible and whether someone can manage the fare all shape who can come in the first place. The useful local measures will include who gets referred, who reaches the first session, who returns and what people are able to do a few months later. Asking people who drop out what got in their way would tell the partnership something a set of end-of-course scores never could.
A good outcome in Nidderdale might be someone making the journey again under their own steam. It might be two people who met in January deciding to go out together in April. For now, the service is looking for people willing to turn up at the start of a walk and help a stranger feel they belong there.
For an informal chat, email Ben Winthrop at ben.winthrop@northyorks.gov.uk or call 07484 912072.
Header image: Natural Health Service. Matt Storm
