Keep Daisy Hill Smiling and Walking – Phase 1

February 2021

We organised the first Daisy Hill Keep Smiling & Walking activities in September 2020 thanks to support from GM Walking and Greater Manchester Council for Voluntary Organisations.

The first walk was incredibly successful, 348 people took part. We asked 90 of them what they thought about the activity and 78 of those said that they were walking more as a family afterwards than beforehand. Overall the feedback from local families so positive that we decided to keep going with small activities that we (The Community & Heritage CIC) pay for ourselves. We want to give local families the opportunity to take part in an enjoyable and healthy activity that can be done safely during Covid 19 restrictions and lockdowns.

For Valentine’s Day 2021 we organised a ‘Love Your Heart” walk with 110 goody bags with gloves and a map for children taking part. As the children walked the route they could spot wooden love hearts attached to trees along the way and put stickers from their goody bag onto the map. This proved so popular we put together another 100 goody bags and extended it for the 15th & 16th February – half term so a perfect time to offer activities to local families.

During the three days over 100 local families completed the walk, including 202 children.  Collectively they walked 612 kilometres.

The feedback has been phenomenal:

‘thank you so much for the walk and packs, kids loved it 👍’

‘Thank you so much for organising today. Freya had a brilliant time. It was the perfect way to start our Valentine’s Day. ❤️’

‘Thank you The Community & Heritage CIC for organising the Love Your Heart Walk today, we loved it and can’t wait for the next one. 🌈♥️☺️’

‘Thank you so much for organising this. My daughter loved the gloves.🧤 We had a fantastic time and a lovely walk. Found some paths that we didn’t know about too!’

We organised a children’s art competition as part of the event and we would like to thank the sponsors of the Love Your Heart Art Competition – Green People MCR, Hindley Road Post Office, Daisy Hill, Johnson Construction, Wigan, Anthony Dellar (personal donation).

In October 2020 we set up a Spooky Halloween walk which attracted an incredible 504 walkers from local families and included a prize of Halloween decorated cupcakes donated by a local business, Rosemary Cakes.

At Christmas we decorated the community art wall and set up a post box to collect letters to Santa. Santa replied to over 50 letters from local children.

We are now looking for funding to organise more walks so keep watching this space and our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/The-Community-Heritage-CIC for details of more activities to come.

The Keep Daisy Hill Smiling art wall project was originally the idea of some local children when Covid-19 struck in March 2020. The project was so popular with young families we decided to develop the idea into “Keep Daisy Hill Smiling and Walking”.

We want to encourage young families (and anyone else would like to get walking) from Daisy Hill and Westhoughton in Bolton to feel the benefits of fresh air, walking, getting a little fitter and doing something fun along the way – all for free.

Families can plan their own Daisy Hill/Westhoughton walking route so they can start and finish at any point. A  Keep Daisy Hill Smiling and Walking local route map is available to download  here.

Along the walk you can enjoy looking at our project display walls, post your own piece of art work and choose from some of the free art and craft activities that are available.

Competition TimeWe are running a “design a wheelie bin sticker” competition for children aged up to 12 years old as part of the project.   You can download more details here.

“Keep Daisy Hill Smiling and Walking” is supported by GMCVO and Greater Manchester Walking.