WALKING is one of the most beneficial forms of exercise for both physical and mental health — and now the Post is collaborating with the team behind the popular walking app, iWalk Cornwall, to provide you with the best walks in the county.

There is clear evidence that walking is one of the most beneficial forms of activity in terms of keeping a good physical and mental health — but where can you go locally that involves beautiful scenery, peace and quiet, and provides a bit of a challenge for all abilities?

The Post is teaming up with iWalk Cornwall to provide readers with local walks in and around Cornwall each month. From coastal to woodland routes, these walks are right on our doorstep!

iWalk Cornwall is a venture run by brothers John and Dave Alden. They have uncovered some of the most remote, beautiful and uncommon Cornish walking routes, perfect for walkers of all abilities — from the dog walkers and easy strollers, to those who love a regular hike by the coast or want to challenge themselves.

All of this is available on iWalk Cornwall’s mobile app, available on the app stores for Apple and Android.

A user of the app is given the opportunity to choose a walk on the ‘walks shop’, which gives plenty of choice for walkers to choose from, taking into consideration ‘dog friendly’ routes, shorter and easier walks, routes with the least amount of livestock and more. There is also a list of the most popular walks on the app, which is updated each month.

Each walk costs £1.99 to download, from which all the details of the walk are made available, including nearest parking, the route itself and even letting you know when your phone is getting low on battery.

The walk always has the number of miles next to it, allowing walkers to choose which route is right for them, along with the grade of the route, where to start and what sort of footwear should be worn.

There is also a list of ‘highlights’, which can be spotted during the walk, and further reviews from other walkers. After purchasing a walk, you can store it ‘for life’ in the ‘my walks’ section of the app.

After selecting the route, walkers are then able to follow the guided walk on the app, which lets you know whereabouts you are along the route, if you are straying from the path and more. The app is designed to guide walkers safely along a route, allowing them to truly soak up the landscape, surroundings and points of interest along the way, stress-free.

Keeping active has been found to be of great benefit to physical and mental health. According to Mind, the mental health charity, people with mental health problems are more likely to have poor diet, smoke or drink too much alcohol and be overweight or obese.

The charity says physical health benefits include the reduced risk of some diseases and physical health problems while adapting to stress, healthier organs, bones and weight, more energy and improved sleep; while mental health benefits include reduced anxiety and happier moods, reduced feelings of stress, clearer thinking, a greater sense of calm, increased self-esteem and a reduced risk of depression.

Co-founder of iWalk Cornwall, John Alden, is based in a small village called Mount near Perranporth, but his family is based at Trewarmett, near Tintagel.

John is one of three brothers, who were brought up in the area, attending school in Camelford. The boys’ parents owned a few holiday cottages at Trewarmett, and that is how John and brother Dave came to first gather some walks along the Tintagel and Trewarmett area.

They started a website, uploading the walks, and received great feedback from people in emails, pressing John and Dave to upload a few more routes over time. These were mostly ‘paper walks’, as John calls them, which people were able to print off from the website to use as a guide.

Parallel with this, John was working in the software industry for the BBC, where he was associated with the likes of David Attenborough. “Dave started prototyping, and we thought it would be interesting to see how it would work on a mobile phone. The walks at Trewarmett worked really well, so we thought we’d give it a try.”

Even for those who have a good ‘sense of direction’, it can be difficult to get back on track during a walk if you leave the right path. This is just one of the issues that John and Dave aimed to resolve by incorporating it into their website, delivering an accurate and trusting route that would let walkers know if they were going wrong or had left the path, and would get them back on track.

“It went surprisingly well,” John said. “But then we discovered, with phone signals being how they are down here in Cornwall, the internet would cut off right in the middle of a walk and it just didn’t work. So we thought we’d try the app and run it without internet. We wanted it to be as inclusive as possible to everyone.”

The app was formed as a prototype app, with the first route being from Padstow to Harbour Cove, an area many people in the county are familiar with, and a top tourist destination.

“People started buying it, so we were like, wow, that’s cool,” John continued. “It was a move in confidence for us, to know people were actually willing to download the app and buy a walk. We did a few more walks for our website, which prompted us to launch iWalk North Cornwall in October 2012.

“We were getting really nice reviews, so then we thought it would be good to do for Apple. But then Apple rejected it. Dave spoke to them about it and they basically said that this Cornwall place isn’t very big, it’s not a very important place. So then we looked at creating one app to run multiple walks, and that was when we launched iWalk Cornwall to cover the whole county.”

As the collection of walks slowly grew, John and Dave re-engineered the app a year or so later to cater to their increasing success.

Detail is an important factor to the app, with each route walked at least three times by John or Dave. As a result, John has walked the distance of Cornwall to the North Pole on foot.

“In terms of physical health, you can burn up to 100 calories per mile, although it all depends on how much you weigh. The great thing about walking, particularly through the app, is that you can keep it up for ages. You can have a nice day out, take breaks when you want.

“A walk tends to be around three to four hours long if you do the whole thing — there’s no way you could do that in a gym because you’d just be exhausted. You can burn off a whole pasty on a walk!

“It also helps to spread the tourists around, and loads of people have discovered places in Cornwall that they hadn’t heard of before. One chap lost eight stone, which has given him extra confidence, and we’ve also had feedback from women who say they now have the confidence to go out and do things on their own.

“This has all happened by evolution over the last seven years. Walking was not something we were brought up with as an activity at home, but when our parents used to go away, Dave would house-sit in the winter and then go on circular walks to explore the area. It certainly helped us connect with the places around us.”

John, who lived in Oxfordshire for 20 years before moving back to Cornwall, is delighted that iWalk Cornwall has built a community of walkers.

“We have our regulars, as we like to call them, who have used the app quite a bit, and have taken on the big challenges. We have volunteers as well now, who keep up to date with a walk.

“I always say it’s like having 244 children — they are very much loved, sometimes naughty and need a lot of attention. You have to maintain them, so it’s a huge amount of effort.”

They have been approached by people who would like an iWalk scheme in other parts of the country, but due to the high maintenance nature of the app, John doesn’t think this will ever come to fruition.

“It takes about two to three weeks to produce just one walk, and then you’ve got to do all the software stuff too,” he said.

The app offers walks with a ‘seasonal angle’, taking into account the ever changing natural surroundings.

“Different walks are good for different times of year, and it lets you see what’s going on in the season — there’s always something new to see. The information is constantly updated so we can meet those needs.

“Our walks tend to be between four and six miles, with a two to three-hour time, but they can last the whole day. You get your ramblers who like to take on 16-mile walks, and then you’ve got people who just like to go for a walk. We’ve recently focused on the shorter ones.

“You can get linear walks with bus journeys and very easy walks where you’re not pushing yourself too hard. If you use the app a couple of times, you start to take to it, and it becomes a hobby. It’s the consistency of it — you can love or hate it, and if you do love it, then it’s definitely a way to go and explore new things.”

One aspect of the app John and Dave are focusing on now is dog support.

John said: “For those with a bigger, heavier dog, coming across stiles and trying to lift your dog over one of those is virtually impossible. We are actively working on dog support.”

The Post will feature a monthly walk from iWalk Cornwall, starting in next week’s edition.

To find out more about iWalk Cornwall, visit www.iwalkcornwall.co.uk and you can download the iWalk Cornwall app for free on the app store for Apple and Android.