Why access matters, thinking about land rights and nature connection with Dartmoor Walking Tours

But I also mentioned that I always associate you, I associate you with land rights, but I also associate you with that kind of nature connection side of things.

And I think that's because of the German school groups that we both guide for and the English teacher who facilitates those, talking about your kind of mindfulness bits through the woods and being like, can you do the thing that Gillian did? And I was like, well, I don't know what Gillian did, so...

But yeah, talk to me about kind of your passion for Nature Connection and you kind of just touched on it a bit when you talked about walking with your friends here.

But yeah, what have you kind of observed on Dartmoor kind of in this context?

Yeah, another great question.

Well, it kind of comes from my own experience that these things do.

that every time I felt anxious or stressed or, you know, really struggling, I just brought myself up either to the coast or jump into Doubtmore just to walk, walk, walk, you know, get in nature.

I mean, look at the sound of the birds and You know, I mean...

Yeah, it is phenomenal.

It is just incredible.

And without it becoming, you know, a mindful thing or a thing that it is now, I really did find it really, really helped.

I'd go back, just kind of calmer.

So, yeah, eventually I kind of brought these into my walks.

And one thing I was finding in my walks, and especially with...

People who were coming from cities, you know, certainly London, who were quite, you know, not quite there.

Yeah.

Who were quite, you know, part of them were still back in London.

Yeah.

Or teenagers who were just... blah blah blah blah blah are on their phones I started to bring that in that mindfulness you know and it it's just it's something simple like you know when we used to go down to Becker Brook it's like okay we're going to enter this portal of the woods and when we go through there we're going to walk in silence you know should we do that and it was only for what three four minutes before we get to Becker Brook so and they loved it

yeah

the teachers loved it too funny enough but And I can say just shortly afterwards, they were just a bit more present.

So I don't do it with every group.

I kind of judge it.

But if I feel it's a group who would just benefit for even some deep breaths, I did it on a recent story walk.

for the festival, for the Dartmouth's Tour Festival, where we just did three-belly breath breathing.