Walk festivals and feats
- Greater Manchester's GM Walking Festival returns Friday, May 1, billed as the region's biggest walking celebration. (ilovemanchester.com) - Northern Ireland opened registration for its month-long Active Travel Challenge in June to swap short car trips for walking or cycling. (saferhighways.co.uk) - Separately, Craig Ferguson, 22 from Paisley, reached 1,500 miles in Kansas during his 3,000-mile U.S. walk this Tuesday. (news.stv.tv) (gbnews.com)
Walking is getting a busy spring in Britain and beyond: Greater Manchester opens a month-long festival on May 1, Northern Ireland has opened June registrations for an active travel challenge, and a 22-year-old Scot has just hit the halfway mark in a 3,000-mile U.S. trek. (ilovemanchester.com) (nibusinessinfo.co.uk) (news.stv.tv) The Greater Manchester Walking Festival runs from May 1 to May 31 and lists more than 350 free events across the city region as part of National Walking Month. Organizers say the 2026 theme is “Celebrating Connected Communities,” with routes led by community groups, charities and local organizations. (ilovemanchester.com) (gmwalking.co.uk) Northern Ireland’s 2026 Active Travel Challenge is set for June and is open for businesses to register now. The program asks people to replace short car journeys with walking, cycling, running or public transport during the month. (nibusinessinfo.co.uk) (saferhighways.co.uk) The Northern Ireland campaign follows a larger 2025 edition, when more than 1,600 people logged more than 27,000 journeys, saving more than £22,000 in travel costs and more than 18,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide. The challenge is run through partnerships that include the Walk Wheel Cycle Trust, the Public Health Agency and Translink. (healthwell.eani.org.uk) (atc.getmeactive.org.uk) In the United States, Craig Ferguson of Paisley reached 1,500 miles in Kansas on Tuesday, April 21, after setting off from Santa Monica, California, on February 22. He is aiming to finish in Boston before Scotland’s opening World Cup match against Haiti. (news.stv.tv) (independent.co.uk) Ferguson, 22, left his job at Nando’s to make the walk and says he wants to become the first person to cross the United States entirely in a kilt. STV reported that he said his support team and “nice cold pint” at the end are keeping him going. (news.stv.tv) (uk.news.yahoo.com) The three stories sit at different scales, but each is pushing walking out of the category of leisure and into daily life, public health and personal endurance. In Greater Manchester and Northern Ireland, the focus is on short local trips; in Kansas, it is one person turning walking into a months-long test of distance. (ilovemanchester.com) (nibusinessinfo.co.uk) (news.stv.tv) The immediate next dates are fixed: Greater Manchester starts on Friday, May 1, Northern Ireland’s challenge runs through June, and Ferguson’s route now points east from Kansas toward Boston. For now, the common measure is simple: more miles on foot. (ilovemanchester.com) (nibusinessinfo.co.uk) (news.stv.tv)
