TempoLife › Features › Walking groups and clubs

Walking groups

A moderated directory of walking groups you can actually turn up to, the pace table that tells you which one suits you, and a practical guide to starting your own.

Browse by country

The directory

Nothing is published yet. Rather than fill this page with groups that may not exist, here is what a listing will contain, what makes a group worth listing, and — the part that is useful whether or not anyone else has listed one — how to start your own.

What a listing contains

• Where and when. A specific meeting point and a repeating time — "Sunday 10:00, main gate of the park", not "weekends, various".
• Pace. In km/h or min/km if the organiser knows it, in words if not. This is the single field that stops the wrong people turning up disappointed.
• Who it suits. Buggies and dogs, or neither. Hills or flat. An hour or three. Whether a 45-minute conversational loop is the point, or a warm-up.
• A contact link. A page, a group chat invite or a sign-up form the organiser controls. This directory never publishes a personal phone number or email.

What gets rejected

Closed groups that a stranger cannot join, paid personal-training sessions dressed up as a club, and anything without a checkable meeting point. Free is not a requirement — a club with a membership fee is fine as long as the fee is stated on the organiser's own page.

Which pace do you actually want?

The most common reason a first group walk goes badly is a pace mismatch, in either direction. The table below puts a number on each of the usual descriptions, with the energy cost per minute at 75 kg body weight and how long a 5 km loop takes at that speed. Find the row that matches how you already walk, then look for a group that says that number.

Two honest caveats. The kcal column scales with your body weight, so at 95 kg every figure is about a quarter higher and at 60 kg about a fifth lower. And a group always walks slower than its fastest member and faster than its slowest: if the listing says 5 km/h, expect 4.5 on the flat with conversation and 5.5 on the way back when everyone is warm.

Source: 2011 Compendium of Physical Activities (Ainsworth et al.) · checked 2026-09-02

How to start a walking group

This is the section that matters while the directory is thin, and it stays true afterwards. Almost every walking group that survives its first winter did the same handful of unglamorous things.

1. Fix one time and never move it

Pick a single repeating slot — "every Sunday at 10:00" — and treat it as immovable for the first three months. A group that meets at a different time each week is asking every member to make a fresh decision every week, and most weeks the decision will be no. Sunday mornings and weekday evenings both work; what does not work is "we will agree in the chat".

2. Choose a meeting point a stranger can find

Not "the park" — a named gate, a specific bench, a bus stop with a number, the door of a named café. Test it by asking someone who has never been whether they could stand in the right place without calling you. Somewhere with a roof, a toilet and coffee within a hundred metres is worth a small detour, because those three things are what keep a group walking through November.

3. Publish the pace and the distance, honestly

Write the number, not an adjective: "about 5 km/h, 5 km, back in an hour". "All abilities welcome" sounds kind and reliably produces one person who is bored and one who is suffering. If you want a genuinely mixed group, run two loops from the same start and say so — a 3 km and a 6 km that finish at the same café is a better answer than a single pace nobody is happy with.

4. Walk it yourself first, in the worst conditions you expect

Do the route in the dark and in the wet before you invite anyone. You are checking for lighting, mud, a stretch with no pavement, a gate that is locked out of season, and whether the timing survives a slow group. Write down the actual duration; then add ten minutes, because a group of six stops for things a solo walker does not.

5. Make joining need no permission

One public link — a page, a group chat invite, a form — and a first line that says exactly where and when. No application, no membership, no attendance rules. If you want to know who is coming, ask, but never make an answer a condition of turning up. The single biggest barrier to a first-time walker is the fear of being conspicuous; anything that makes them announce themselves in advance makes it worse.

6. Plan for the dark half of the year now

At these latitudes a group founded in June meets its real test in November, when an 18:00 start is fully dark. Decide in advance: move to a lit route, move the time to the weekend, or hand out reflective bands and keep going. Wear a reflector after dark — it is normal practice across this region and in some of these countries it is a legal requirement for pedestrians, so check your own national traffic rules. Every country page here carries the sunset table for that decision.

7. Give someone else a key

A group with one organiser is one bad flu away from ending. From the fourth or fifth walk, have a second person who can post the message and stand at the meeting point. It is the cheapest possible insurance and it changes the group from your project into theirs.

What you do not need

You do not need a name, a logo, insurance, a constitution, a bank account or permission from anybody to walk in a public place with friends. Those things become worth discussing if you start charging money, handling personal data, working with a school or a care home, or organising something big enough to need a permit — at which point ask your local authority rather than the internet. Until then, the entire administrative burden of a walking group is one recurring calendar entry.

General organising and activity guidance, not medical advice. If a prospective member is recovering from illness, surgery or injury, the person to ask about a safe pace and distance is their own clinician.

List your walking group

Free, and open to any group that a stranger could turn up to. Church walks, hospital rehab walks, Nordic-walking clubs, dog-walking meetups, works lunchtime loops — if someone can find you and join, it belongs here. A person reviews every submission; nothing publishes itself.

Frequently asked questions