Our guide to starting, sustaining and growing a walking group

For confident walkers - or confident people who want to be better walkers! - starting a walking group is one of the best ways to meet new people while getting active. It's also a great way to help your community, and to get support for your personal goals with like-minded walkers.

At Get Ireland Walking we can help you set-up and run a walking group and do so in a way that makes it satisfying and rewarding for you and fun for all the walkers in the group.  We've got a wealth of support and information for walking groups, and this page runs through our quick-start guides on the key topics for groups.

We recommend you start by reading our guide to Getting Organised - it brings you through the steps you need to take to have a well-run walking group.  Similarly our Walking the Walk guide offers help and tips on organising a community walk, whilst Finding a Route gives advice on finding a safe, challenging and inclusive route for your group.

When you start considering the detail of managing your group, we can help with that too: We have a useful guide to Insurance that helps explain the facts, and offers information on the direct help that we can provide.  We also have a set of Forms for Groups that gives you useful forms, and tips on how best to use them.

Steps to Start Your Walking Group Screenshot Walking the Walk Screenshot Finding a suitable community walk Screenshot Insurance Screenshot Forms for Groups Screenshot 

As well as this, we have lots of advice on how to sustain and grow your group: This is key to keep the group interesting for you and your walkers, and to ensure it doesn't wither away.

We can also help you with Getting the Word Out to promote your group, as well as offering you general advice on Going and Growing - a guide to keeping your group active, and to finding new walkers.

In addition, don't forget to Find a walking group near you to get first-hand experience of what's involved - and you can also contact your Local Sports Partnership to get direct support and advice.

You can also watch our videos that showcase existing groups - they give a practical idea of what's involved, and how rewarding it is for both walkers and leaders.

Finally, don't forget to Register Your Group with Get Ireland Walking. That way we can help people to find your group, and bring it new members.

 

PROMOTE YOUR WALKING GROUP Screenshot Keeping vibrant and motivated Screenshot

in association of Sports Council Hi Mountaineering Ireland Partner Organisations
Get Ireland Walking recognises that walking is an activity with a potential risk of personal injury. Participants should be aware of and accept these risks and be responsible for their own actions and involvement.