Two people, a lot of miles, and quite often a pub at the end.

How it all started

Like a lot of things that turn out to be unexpectedly brilliant, Wicked Walks started out of necessity. When lockdown arrived and clipped our wings — no travel, no boats, no friends around the table — we needed to find something. So we started walking.

We live in West Sussex, surrounded by some of the most beautiful countryside in England, and we'd barely scratched the surface of it. So we laced up and headed out. One walk became another, which became another, and somewhere along the way we stopped counting the miles and started just enjoying them.

We are definitely not hardcore ramblers. We don't own any technical gear, we don't talk about gradients, and we have been known to turn back at the sight of a particularly muddy field. But what we've discovered is that you really can enjoy yourself in your everyday clothes, at your own pace, and end up somewhere genuinely wonderful.

We found places we never knew existed — hidden valleys, canal towpaths, vineyard tracks, river paths — all within a short drive of home. And we kept being asked the same question by friends: where did you walk this weekend? Which is exactly why we built Wicked Walks.

Why we do so much

In 2014, completely out of the blue, Lucy was diagnosed with leukaemia. It came as a devastating shock — she was given a year to live without a bone marrow transplant. What followed was a hideous ordeal that we wouldn't wish on anyone.

But it brought us closer together and made us stronger than we knew we could be. And it changed the way we think about time. When you've been through something like that, you stop putting things off. You go on the trip. You say yes to the adventure. You find the walk, and you find the pub at the end of it.

Lucy came through it — clearly, because she's been walking miles with us ever since — and that experience is quietly behind everything we do. We love laughing, we love good company, we love travelling. Wicked Walks is just one expression of all of that.

What makes a Wicked Walk

We get asked this a lot. The honest answer is that it has to pass a few simple tests.

It has to be somewhere genuinely worth going — somewhere with a bit of character, whether that's a view, a stretch of water, a surprising bit of history, or just a really good feeling about the place. It has to be manageable for normal people in normal clothes. And ideally, it has to end somewhere you can sit down, have a drink, and feel like you've earned it.

We're constantly being asked for route ideas by friends, which told us there's a real appetite for exactly this kind of recommendation — personal, honest, and with a good pub at the end. That's what Wicked Walks is, and what we hope it always will be.