Our Story

Mountains not molehills was created during the COVID-19 pandemic but the idea had been existence in my head for several years already. Having struggled with my mental wellbeing for most of my adult life I often found myself stuck in the same bad habits with no motivation to break them.

Then in 2013 whilst having a pint with a friend of mine it turned out he too was sick of the same bad habits. He mentioned he used to love walking with his dad when he was a kid and so we decided we would do a walk somewhere. That somewhere was Latrigg in the Lake District.

Latrigg is one of Alfred Wainwrights favourite walks and even with the weather we encountered that day (torrential rain) I could see why. And so we continued arranging hikes and even grew a good group of our friends who came along too.

The problem I found was that we were arranging mountain hikes that would come about very infrequently due to other people commitments and so for that one hiking day I felt great but in-between I reverted to the daily bad habit routines.

After a few years of this it became apparent, I was looking at it all wrong. I was trying to hike mountains every time, but what I need was to develop a better relationship with walking. The pandemic gave me that opportunity, with travel no longer possible I began to explore the area I lived. Although the area was flat and lacks any hills, there were plenty of canal, loop line and woodland walking routes (we like to call them the molehills) right on my doorstep.

I began to get out walking every day, sometimes just 30-minutes other times for two-three hours. All that mattered was the habit of getting outside each day.

So as fantastic as climbing mountains is don’t ignore those little ‘molehill’ walks as in my experience it will be those that really create a more positive relationship with walking and the outdoors in general.