National Geographic

National Geographic: Got 100 seconds? Use them to tour Britain’s National Parks from the air


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“An exhilarating new film by National Geographic Explorer Daniel Raven-Ellison takes the high road to visual variety – and scientific insight – in tribute to the country’s wildest places.

In a period when even local travel is in woefully short supply, a nostalgia for both spectacle and variety is understandable. But to Daniel Raven-Ellison, the National Geographic Explorer behind UK National Parks in 100 Seconds, there is a deeper rationale at play behind his new film.

“I’m really interested in the gap between what we think the UK looks like and the reality on the ground,” Raven-Ellison tells National Geographic. “Back in 2018 I ran a poll with Friends of the Earth and we found that nearly 1 in 3 people think that over half of the UK is built on. Depending on how you measure it, the reality is closer to 5%.”

“That gap in people’s geographical imaginations is a big issue,” he adds, “as people are forming opinions and making decisions based on a misunderstanding of what makes up our country. That matters because people are voting, consuming and acting on issues such as migration, housing and making space for nature based on it.” Simon Ingram

Read the whole article on National Geographic’s website.

National Geographic: How you can help plot the future of UK walking – from a standstill


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“Walkers, your country needs you – and the inability to walk very far at the moment needn’t be a barrier.

An ambitious new project led by a National Geographic Explorer is recruiting an army of 500 volunteers to create the most comprehensive network of walking routes in Great Britain – linking every village, town and city via the nation’s intricate web of public rights of way.

The Slow Ways project is the brainchild of geographer and explorer Daniel Raven-Ellison, who is seeking to find a silver lining to the cloud of coronavirus lockdown. With the population confined to home, his intrepid routes-without-boots scheme requires nothing more than a computer, map-reading skills and a galvanised public spirit. His goal is to plot more than 4,000 walking routes on an online map, using the 200,000km of footpaths and bridleways that trace their way between village, town and city.”

Read the whole article on National Geographic.

National Geographic: London becomes world’s first ‘National Park City.’ What does that mean?


“The National Park City idea is all about making cities greener, healthier, and wilder, says Daniel Raven-Ellison, a geographer and National Geographic explorer who originated the concept six years ago.

“What an amazing moment for London. Celebrating, honouring and recognising the biodiversity and greenness of this great city,” said Jayne Miller, Chair of World Urban Parks. It’s a challenge to cities around the world to venerate, protect, and increase the green spaces, Miller said in a statement.”

Read the full article on National Geographic.

National Geographic: One Man’s Plan to Transform a Major City Into a National Park


“What is a park? For most of us, a park is a place apart – a reserve of nature in a world increasingly dominated by human activities and arranged to fulfill human needs and desires. But a park is also for people –  a place of refuge for the human soul, which tends to wither when long separated from green and growing things.

John Muir, the great naturalist, captured this dual purpose at the dawn of the national parks movement. “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity,” Muir wrote in 1901. Our concept of parks, especially in North America, Europe, and Australia, has remained largely unchanged since.

Daniel Raven-Ellison, a self-described “guerrilla geographer” and National Geographic explorer, would like to change it.”

Continue reading this article by Emma Marris on National Geographic.

Photo: Luke Massey

Using technology to make #wildcities


First posted on NationalGeographic.com/Cisco

Back in June, I started my walk across all of the UK’s national parks and cities in St David’s, Britain’s smallest city. Since then, I’ve spent 338 hours taking 2,443,845 steps and walking 1,686km. To put that into perspective, equivalent to walking the length of the country and then some.

During all that time, I wore an an Emotiv EEG headset which collected data over 5 million times during the expedition: taking a 3D snapshot of activity inside my brain, transferring the reading from my headset to my smartphone, using an algorithm to work out my emotions and then sharing the data through the cloud for geotagging, analysis, visualisation and storage. I’m now working with neuroscientists and a range of experts to crunch and analyse the data. I hope to have some findings to share later this year.

What has become clear to me is the enormous power of this kind of technology to improve our lives. I really felt that wearing the headset influenced my behaviour. Much like how other wearable devices (such as activity trackers) influence how far I walk and how many steps I take, the brainware put me more in touch with my feelings. On a very personal and practical level, I feel that is has not only helped me to avoid stress but also actively search for interest in everyday places.

The opportunity is for technologies like these to become more affordable, used by far more people and connected through the internet of everything. We already know that data is being used to in many areas to improve health and social care, save energy and preserve the environment and help commuters travel with increased efficiency.Data revealing how thousands or millions of people feel about specific or different kinds of places could directly influence how they are designed. I hope that big data from a crowd of brains will add to the growing evidence for why we should make cities greener, wilder, less polluted and more healthy.

Influenced by wearing the headset, I had many thoughts and ideas about how we could make cities better. My lasting impression is that the UK is a wonderful country, but it’s also bursting with potential and opportunities to make it even more so. Here are just a few ideas of things I think would make the UK better.

Be more inviting
We should strive to make our cities more inviting and accessible to all by growing habitat for wildlife, having benches outside our houses, prioritising streets for children and animals instead of cars, hanging swings on street corners and offsetting every negative “no” sign with a positive “do” sign.

Be more interesting
We could increase visual interest in our cityscapes by erecting sculptures on roundabouts, curating exhibitions on household window sills, designing streets to boost bird populations and amplify their songs, chalking poetry onto paths and encouraging or making in mandatory for retail parks to have as much green as possible and make climbing or art walls on the side of their buildings.

Be more invested
We should be more invested in places by not just protecting nature and heritage but actually creating it, allowing culture and life to thrive wherever possible. We should walk more, engage with each other more and invest in making places more inviting and more interesting.

Be more connected
We should be better connected by ensuring everyone can always get a decent data connection, (unless they are deep inside a cave), using sensors and displays to reveal and visualise current levels of air pollution, monitoring flood risks at a hyper-local level and live screen nearby wildlife in city centres.

Many of the above ideas are personal, local and low tech. Increased connectivity will help us share, engage and evaluate these actions and many more to work towards, more liveable, healthier and wilder cities.

The next part of my journey is to use all of my Wild Cities expedition experiences, ideas and findings to further my work to make London a successful National Park City. To find out when the final Wild Cities results are published and how the London National Park City campaign is going you can follow me on Twitter at @DanRavenEllison.

 

Time Out: An urban wanderer walked all the way across London. Here’s what he discovered


I’ve just finished walking across all of the UK’s 15 national parks and 69 cities: the equivalent of the length of Britain and then some. Without a doubt, the best part of my journey was my 18-hour, 56km leg across London: from Hinchley Wood in the south-west, through the centre of the city and all the way to Grange Hill in the north-east. The UK has many brilliant cities, but none compare to London’s diversity, omnipotence and sheer scale.

Continue reading on TimeOut.com.

BBC News: Mood swings. The man mapping Britain’s emotions


“National Geographic explorer Daniel Raven-Ellison has just completed a 2.5 million step walk across Britain’s cities and parks and electronically measured his changing mood with each step.

Wearing an EEG monitor strapped to his head he collected millions of snapshots of the activity in his brain as he crossed 69 cities over seven months in the UK from June last year.

The monitor measures the electrical activity of the brain from sensors located across key areas of the scalp.

Its software provided metrics on how stressed, relaxed, excited, focused, interested and engaged he was during his walks.”

Continue reading David Sillito’s report on the BBC News website.