Skye Pupils Take A Step Further

Pupils at Portree Primary School will this week (Thursday 30th June) receive prizes from "Step It Up Highland" for walking the furthest in a Highland wide competition held during National Walk to School Week (Monday 23rd – Friday 27th May 2005).

Around 195 Highland primary pupils competed from 8 schools (one from each Council area) throughout the region to see who could walk the furthest over the course of the week.

Walk to School Week is a national event which encourages walking to school and provided an ideal opportunity for a walking Pedometer Competition.

Highland Council’s School Travel Plan Coordinator, Carolyn Ward, said: "The total number of steps walked by Highland pupils taking part in the competition was a staggering 14,763,109 steps! This was well beyond expectations, and roughly equivalent to the distance of walking directly from Land’s End to John O’Groats six times!"

In addition to Portree Primary, the other schools involved were Deshar Primary (Badenoch and Strathspey); South Primary, Wick (Caithness); Gledfield Primary (Sutherland); Auldearn Primary (Nairn); Ballachulish Primary (Lochaber); Holm Primary (Inverness) and Kiltearn Primary (Ross and Cromarty).

Each school signed up to take part in Walk to School Week as they are actively involved with School Travel Plans and Safer Routes to Schools work, and are working on promoting ‘active travel’ to school, like walking and cycling.

A class from each of the schools was chosen to represent their school, and each pupil was given a pedometer to record their distances travelled. Pupils used the pedometers to clock up their steps, and recorded them for each day of Walk to School Week.

Pupils at Portree Primary school walked the furthest overall (relative to number of pupils taking part) and won "Step It Up Highland" gym bags, full of road safety goodies.

This competition forms part of the Highland Council Road Safety Unit’s ongoing work in promoting active travel to school, like walking and cycling, and will help to raise awareness of the benefits, to health and wellbeing, of walking everyday.

For further details please contact Carolyn Ward, School Travel Plan Coordinator on 01463 702649.