The Golden Valley Walking Club celebrate after receiving £10,500 of National Lottery funding to help people ‘Come Walk with Us!’

We are celebrating after being awarded over £10,000 in National Lottery funding to support our work to get more people enjoying walking; in order to increase fitness, improve mental health and socialise. The club will use the money to continue to offer free membership and will also aim to increase the number and variety of walks offered, by training more voluntary walk leaders and members in First Aid, Navigation and Lowland Walk Leading – using qualified, local training providers. The training will give participants more confidence to lead their own walks or get out and about on their own. Money will also be spent on social events – supporting community spaces and allowing members to meet new friends and gain support, if needed. The funding will allow the club to undertake walks in other areas of Herefordshire and beyond, due to the ability to hire community mini buses. This is all thanks to National Lottery players.

The Golden Valley Walking Club has been running in its current form since 2021, when we were awarded National Lottery funding in order to get the local community to ‘Come Walk with Us’. The club was founded by Dave Howerski – an ex-Forces personnel with an interest in mental health. Dave understood the health and social benefits of walking and was keen to help his local community recover from the after effects of Lock-down. 

The walking club now have two trained Walk Leaders, offering twice monthly walks of varying ability. Some members of the club also run ad-hoc walks at other times. Many of the walks have over 20 people join them, some bringing their dogs too. 

Becky Richards, Secretary of the club says “We’re delighted that The National Lottery Community Fund has recognised the benefits that we are providing. Thanks to National Lottery players, we will now be able work towards expanding our membership to ensure more communities benefit from walking with us”. 

The National Lottery Community Fund, which distributes money raised by National Lottery players for good causes, is the largest community funder in the UK. It has recently launched its new strategy, ‘It starts with community’, which will underpin its efforts to distribute at least £4 billion of National Lottery funding by 2030. 

As part of this, the funder has four key missions, which are to support communities to come together, be environmentally sustainable, help children and young people thrive and enable people to live healthier lives. 

National Lottery players raise over £30 million a week for good causes across the UK. Thanks to them, last year The National Lottery Community Fund was able to distribute over half a billion pounds (£615.4 million) of life-changing funding to communities. 

To find out more visit www.TNLCommunityFund.org.uk   

The Club is run by volunteers and overseen by a committee. At the AGM in April 2024 the committee was elected to stand for two years:

Chairperson: Hugh Vernon BEM

Secretary and Treasurer: Becky Richards – thepigpen29@btinternet.com

Membership  Alistair Pond –  alistairpond@gmail.com

Chris Lloyd – cmlloyd21@gmail.com

Jo Parham – carnduncan12@gmail.com

Petra Beard – petra.beard@btinternet.com

Web Site: Peter Rance – peterance@gmail.com