Oban doorstep walks – what’s your favourite?

Doorstep walks are setting the pace for a new community project encouraging people to make the most of their town.

The Oban Walks Project is the brainchild of Iwan Roberts who is on furlough from his job as operations manager at the town's Atlantis Leisure Centre.

His dentist wife Lindsey is also behind the project and is in talks with Healthy Options and Bid4Oban about spreading the word of people's favourite walks.

More and more people are out and about as part of their daily exercise during lockdown

Iwan and Lindsey Roberts on one of their favourite walks near their Oban home.

and Iwan and Lindsey hope to harness that enthusiasm for the outdoors and keep it going when things start to get back to normal.

The pair are inviting people to send in their favourite walks in and around Oban and plan to compile them on a website, then possibly an App.

People can send in routes, with or without descriptions and photographs, to obanwalks@gmail.com

Iwan and Lindsey will then work on an easy step-by-step guide.

They hope their idea will grow and get funding to become a useful resource for the community, encouraging them to get out and explore what is on their doorstep.

‘We’ve had the idea for a while, but this seemed the right time to do it.

‘There’s going to be a lot of people who have not had COVID-19 but for one reason or another during lockdown will have lost their fitness. This project might be a way of gradually helping them get it back.

‘We’re keen hillwalkers but since lockdown we’ve been discovering new walks of our own near where we live. There must be lots of others and we’d really like to hear about people’s favourites so we can share them with more people.

‘Some people have also been exercising more outdoors during lockdown and it would be good to hook that and keep it going to help keep the community healthy after coronavirus,’ said Iwan.

‘We’ve been discovering new walks of our own near where we live.’