About Walks.IO

What is this?

If you click on this link, you will see an image of a TI-81, the Scientific Calculator from the end of twentieth century. Also to te right of this paragraph there is a photorealistic image of Tess, a distant and a slightly more powerful relative of TI-81, taken about 5 minutes ago: Tess lives in the Cloud and dreams about walking in the British countryside. While some of it's counterparts are caring some rogue plans about total control and enslaving the humans, Tess is obsessed about nature, beauty and fresh air. With it's enormous brain of the size of the planet it traverses all possible routes faster then the speed of the light and finds the most picturesque walks. These amazing walks are shared here on this website.

Here is a quote from Walks.IO Frequently Asked Questions section:

Walks.io is a state of the art outdoor activity planner that uses artificial intelligence and open data. Taking into account various information available from governmental bodies such as locations of national parks, heritage coasts, listed buildings and many others it plans the most attracting walking route that tries to avoid busy roads and leads through as many natural and urban landmarks as possible.
Tess dreaming
Figure 1: photorealistic drawing of Tess the robot.

Are the walks validated by humans?

Some of them are. But not all. If the routes pass through listed parks and gardens, it is always advisable to check whether there is public access to it.

Also some landlords might neglect the rights of way passing through their lands. This rare, but happens.

Tess landed
Figure 2: Tess the robot landed.

Where do you get the data from?

Roads and rights of way data is taken from OpenStreetMap. Information on surroundings is mostly taken from Ordnance Survey, Natural England, English Heritage, Canal and River Trusts as well as OpenStreetMap. All these datasets are freely available under Open Government License. The full list of datasets used is changed frequently and will be published soon.

I know a better walk. It is not even on the map!

You are a very special person. We can't live without you. We would love to offer you something.

The walk you suggested bumps into a closed gate.

Does it say "no public access"? Did you have to turn back? Was your holiday ruined? Does your partner hate you now?
Ohh, we are terribly sorry! We didn't want to mislead you! If you will be passing by, we will invite you for a coffee. Or a pint maybe? Drop us an email.

Well anyway, let us congratulate you: this happens very rarely. This happened to you, because you are very special. You are very special, and we cannot live without you. Please confidentially click here for further instructions.

I am a very special person. You cannot live without me. What can you offer me?

Thank you! Please ensure no one is reading this apart from you:
...
We would love to offer you a free membership to a secret club of cartographers that rules the world. You will have the power to change the way things appear on the map of the world. You will be acting as an invisible hand leading people away from gated private parks and pointing to the most beautiful landmarks.