Wokingham

A sculpture celebrating ten years of Wokingham Borough Council’s Health Walk was unveiled by executive member for environment – and volunteer health walk leader Cllr Simon Weeks on Friday June 26.

The sculpture, by Oxfordshire artist David Gosling, was commissioned last year as part of the scheme’s tenth anniversary and is now in pride of place in the orchard near the Dragonfly Café at Dinton Pastures Country Park. More than 100 health walkers came to see it unveiled at the schemes annual barbecue and hog roast.

The Wokingham Health Walks are free and are designed to improve fitness. Regular brisk walks can reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, strokes, osteoporosis, stress, bowel cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. The walks can also help weight loss.

Cllr Weeks, who is one of the Wokingham Health Walks’ 80 volunteer leaders, said: “It is wonderful that the Health Walks are still going strong in the Wokingham Borough as they provide a lovely way to keep active and to appreciate the borough’s countryside. I certainly enjoy them and I know many others do as well. The sculpture of a walking man is a fitting way to celebrate the walks’ success and I am confident that success will continue.”

The Wokingham scheme now has a mailing list of 850 walkers and organises 17 walks each week around the borough.

As part of the anniversary celebrations last year, it was calculated that Wokingham health walkers had walked 245,960 miles combined – ten times around the world – and had drunk 52,000 cups of tea and burnt off 18,304,000 calories. In addition volunteer walk leaders had given up a total of 4,754 day (the equivalent of 13 years of volunteering).

Wokingham Borough Council