Wellbeing activities
In the thirteenth century, St Thomas Aquinas conceived of the human as a compound of body, mind, and soul. We embrace holistic health and offer you embodied mind and soul connections with Paston landscapes with the 'WALKER' tool.
WALKER tool
We invite you to enhance your experience of the Paston trails by becoming a 'WALKER'. The acrostic* provides inspiration for ways to do so and provides links to help you choose wellbeing resources for the style of walking that you wish to do.
* acrostic means the first letter of each section spells out 'WALKER'.
Scroll to find out more.
W is for wellbeing
We walk for the health of our minds and bodies. Walking is a free form of exercise, boosting our step count and may help improve strength, heart, lung and immunity functioning.* A walk can help focus the mind in order to solve a problem, or simply be a time to rest the mind and enjoy a peaceful connection with Nature. It can also be a chance to chat with a friend.
*Please seek professional medical advice about walking if you have any health concerns.
The walk overviews provide free GPX fitness codes and access audits detailing terrain descriptions. The walks near me allows you to build activity levels. Check out how the Paston Wellbeing Walk experiences off the beaten track offer activities for mindful moments, and stimulating or relaxing sensory connections with Nature. Follow us on social media for occasional group-led sociable walking events:
A is for action
A walk can be enriched by taking photos, doing a family Explorer Hunt trail, developing map reading skills, listening to the Paston dramas on the audio trails or having a picnic. Wellbeing can be about sensory stimulation through mindful moments. Experience art activities, poetry experiments, or creative story-making, with inspiration from your rambles in the countryside.
Extend your walk experience after you get home with:
all-age creative activities,
or heritage research.
L is for learning
The Paston letters unlock the world in which we live through connections with local history and area studies. Stimulate your imagination as you imagine walking in the footprints of lives lived, develop new knowledge and extend your walk experience with learning new skills.
For children, the walks link to KS 1-4 (UK National Curriculum) activities, which can be done in advance of the walk or as follow-on activities, by home-learners, families, youth groups or schools (a teacher's toolkit also exists).
Adults: delve deep into Paston history and be an active heritage detective developing new skills here.
Children: for each route, in the 'Explore the Story Further' sections, are learning activities. All of the resources can be found here: This Is Paston: Teaching with the Pastons
K is for keepsakes
What will you bring back from your walk?
A leaf? A wildflower to press?
A souvenir from a church?
A new historical fact? A curiosity to find out more?
Perhaps inspiration for creative writing?
A sensory or spiritual awareness of the beauty around?
Your keepsake could be that you take a photo to capture the moment. If so, might you share a picture with us? Tag #pastonfootprints
E is for environment
The outstanding Norfolk landscape and local wildlife is best encountered by foot. Paston countryside offers an intriguing tapestry of trees, plants and eco-systems. On your carbon footprint friendly activity, you could be pro-active in caring for the environment by doing a bit of litter picking. Scattering some native wildflower seeds. Or engage all your senses and tune fully into your environment, creating an immersive connection to your walk. From beaches to forests to country lanes, each walk has its own magical atmosphere that will change with the seasons.
Explore the pictorial walk overviews on the places tab or follow us on Instagram for uplifting pictures of Norfolk's beautiful landscapes.
R is for re-imagining
Every landscape and every track retains memories, which can be revisited from the earliest through to recent times. Our heritage trails enable you to experience walking in the Paston family footsteps. Uncover their stories in a creative and immersive way.
Check the heritage walk pages for more of the story.
Explore the creative prompts.
Watch the Paston Youtube videos and interact with the digital reconstructions of Paston homes and churches.
Pioneering research
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Are you a member of a wellbeing group or a Health or Humanities disability researcher? Are you interested in how diverse sensory, embodied and cognitive interpretations of heritage can centralise creative health? Or how to do heritage storytelling in new ways?
Take part:
Please get in touch with Dr Karen Smyth to explore research and co-production possibilities. We are seeking Experts-by Experience as well as Health, Creative and Heritage practitioners and academics. We are also keen for public volunteers to try out our ideas on the walks.
See Karen's UEA profile here.
Project email: pastonfootprints@gmail.comisitors to your site with a
The Wellbeing focus of Paston Footprints is kindly supported by the Bishop of Norwich and the Green Care Network's First Nature Prize, and with UEA and NHLF funding. introduction. Double click to edit and add your own text.