Good morning friends! The Wildlife Trusts’ Big Wild Walk will run from 21 October – 3 November 2024, raising funds to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030.
I’ll be walking every day, recording Series 51 of your daily walking podcast, Walk the Pod. Join Team Walk the Pod to get outside this autumn, walk, and protect wildlife!
The Wildlife Trusts is a grassroots movement of people from a wide range of backgrounds and all walks of life, on a mission to restore a third of the UK’s land and seas for nature by 2030. The Wildlife Trust believes everyone, everywhere, should have access to nature and the joy and health benefits it brings.
With 41% of species in decline and 15% at risk of extinction, the crisis facing UK nature is unprecedented. Protecting wildlife alone isn’t enough now; restoration is essential. Through the #BigWildWalk, you can be part of nature’s recovery. The Wildlife Trusts are a force of nature, with almost 1 million supporters.
No matter where you are in the UK, there is a Wildlife Trust inspiring people about nature and standing up for wildlife and wild places. Each Wildlife Trust is an independent charity formed by people getting together to make a positive difference to wildlife, climate and future generations. Together we have more than 850,000 members, over 42,500 volunteers, 2,000 staff and 600 trustees.
I walk, always have. School and back was four miles a day, rain or shine, in clothes made mainly of polyester (oh, the sweaty 70s). Buses were too random, and in any case were full of sharp-elbowed, tough old ladies. So I walked everywhere, and liked it. It was just me and the road and the sky, and we became firm friends.
But I never got into counting steps, I’ve never been tempted to wear a Fitbit and I’m a bit wary of people who do. Hell, I don’t even measure my waistline, except by seeing which pair of jeans fits (the elasticated ones). So, why am I trying out a walking app called trundl?
The short answers are, because trundl is not your typical walking app and my friend Rachel thought I’d like it. And she, I believe, would rather nail jelly to a wall than persuade me into something competitive.
It’s also a sad fact of life in the suburbs – where I and more than half of us live – that, after a few years, our motivation to go out and walk around our all-too-familiar home patch can dwindle, especially if there are no nearby green spaces big enough to get satisfyingly lost in. So, I was kind of in the market for a kick in the backside.
Not that trundl ever kicks; it prefers to nudge. The app sets up a triangular relationship between charities, businesses (‘brand partners’) and you, the individual trundlr. You pay a monthly subscription – currently £3.99 – and trundlr commits to giving at least 10 percent of that to the charities. But that’s not the main deal: at the heart of the app are Community trundls, in which all trundls completed within a period of about a week count towards a specific distance goal. Reaching the goal triggers extra donations, often given by a business, for a specific charity (they rotate). You don’t have to sign up to a Community trundl; your trundls are automatically counted towards them when one is happening, which is often.
trundl describe their app experience as ‘Go, Give, Get.’ ‘Go’ means recording your walks—trundls—in the app. ‘Give’ means selecting your preferred charities from a list, currently just five. ‘Get’ means getting rewards, which consist of Badges, i.e. markers of your progress, and Offers in the form of discount codes from trundl’s brand partners. There is also News: summaries of past and future Community trundls.
I asked my twentysomething kids if they’d use trundl. They’re digital natives and have a sharp appreciation of what they see as the true nature of most internet commerce: when there’s no discernible product or the product is free, you’re the product – or your data is.
So, no surprise when they were sceptical. “What are you getting for your money? You can count your steps or track your walks for free on any smartphone, and if you want to give money to a charity, give it direct; they’ll get 100 percent plus Gift Aid instead of just 10 percent. The app is just serving you up on a plate as a niche market to businesses.”
OK, thanks lads. And go easy on the cynicism, it costs, y’know. I don’t doubt the app has a commercial logic behind it. But come on, if the offers work, if they give you discounts on stuff you actually want, what’s happening is, your subscription is supporting a platform that promotes a net flow of money through the app from businesses to charities. That’s good, right? That’s different from direct giving, and maybe better.
I’m a realist, I hope; I know I’m the product and this ideal scenario is likely to be realised for only a fraction of users at any one time, but I’m not just the product; I’m a walker who believes small acts of kindness help the world to turn – and why let the perfect be the enemy of the good? Its a great idea to link walking & giving, and I hope trundl succeeds. As the app grows, more users will attract more brand partners and more offers, so the fraction will grow too.
Ideally, I’d like more ways for trundlrs to interact; you can share your trundls on completion and add a comment, but I feel inclined to share only really big or particularly lovely ones. A way for Community trundls to connect trundlrs in actual communities would be good.
trundl is aimed at an underserved demographic, one I’m happy to fall slap in the middle of: those who walk for pleasure as much as health. I believe there’s no niche anyone could cram us all into. We power-walk seldom, amble often; we’re amiable rather than ambitious. And at the end of the day, we want to be tired out by our walking, not our walking app.
Editor’s note: trundl is available from your favourite App Store, check out the app here.
Rachel Wheeley MCIPR FRSA 