Source: City of Plymouth
Are you joining the 2025 Big Plymouth Travel Challenge?
We are teaming up with Sustrans for a third year to encourage people to leave their cars at home for some of their everyday journeys and try cleaner, greener, healthier ways of getting from A to B.
The challenge starts on Saturday (1 March) and encourages people to choose active travel options like walking, cycling, scooting or skating for a month. It’s a great way of staying fit and healthy, saving money and helping to improve our air quality – so get those comfy shoes and bikes out!
As an extra incentive, there are three special prizes – a Raleigh bike worth £475, an adult micro scooter worth £175 and a gold level bike service worth £140 from Bikespace in Devonport – as well as shopping vouchers up for grabs. See the Sustrans website for full prize details.
Everyone who signs up will get online access to plenty of useful hints, tips and support and a personalised dashboard where they can log their progress. They can even set themselves targets, such as miles travelled, calories burned, or carbon emissions cut.
It’s all part of our ‘active travel social prescribing’ programme, funded by Active Travel England, where our transport and public health teams work with partners including Sustrans, as well as health providers, link workers (within GP practices and health and wellbeing hubs) and community groups to get more people enjoying active travel as a form of exercise.
Councillor John Stephens, our walking and cycling champion, said: “We know how important it is to keep active and this is such an easy way to do that. Making just a few of those regular trips – or even part of them – on foot or bike can make a really big difference to our health and wellbeing.
“It also helps to reduce the amount of traffic on our roads, which is good for us all. More than 450 people took part in last year’s challenge, recording over 6,000 trips and avoiding 1,861kg of carbon emissions. This year we hope to do even better.”
Everyone who lives or works in Plymouth is welcome to sign up to the challenge and you can go solo or team up with friends, family or colleagues.
Register now and get ready to start logging your journeys!