One step at a time Walking and cycle paths built by local volunteers

In the past two years, multiple sections of a hopedfor 76-mile rural cycling and walking route spanning Somerset have sprouted up around the small town of Shepton Mallet, seemingly every few weeks.

- Laura Laker

These new routes are popular. One 300-yard path in the heart of the town, for example, uses one of Historic Railway Estates' bridges for the first time for a cycle route (an organisation until then given to infilling its structures). The path, with its smooth surface and artwork, ducks under a busy road that was previously terrifying for walking and cycling. Now a large housing area is connected to schools, shops, parks and local businesses. Within a year digital counters detected 104,000 trips in a town of less than 10,000 people.

Another new cycling and walking route has connected two small villages, both of less than 800 inhabitants, Westbury-sub-Mendip and Easton, previously linked only by a narrow, fast A-road with no pavement. It is expected to be used on 30,000 trips in its first year.