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Spacial IntegrityLandscapes · Scotland

Wellbeing Trails

The Slow Mile

An accessible woodland trail designed with an NHS partnership as a prescribed route.

The Slow Mile
Scope
Access design, construction
Length
1.6 kilometres
Gradient
Below 1:20 throughout

The story

Stirlingshire · 2025

A mile of woodland, graded so that a wheelchair, a walking frame and a running child can all use it.

Rest points every eighty metres. Handrails where the ground demands them and nowhere else. No signage telling anyone how to feel.

The evidence for landscape and mental health is not in dispute. The design question is simply whether people can reach it.

  • The Slow Mile — view 1
  • The Slow Mile — view 2
  • The Slow Mile — view 3

Design process

How the work was made.

  1. 01

    Clinical input

    Route developed with occupational therapists and a community mental health team.

  2. 02

    Survey

    Gradient mapping to keep every section below 1:20 without engineering the woodland away.

  3. 03

    Construction

    Bound aggregate surface, hand-built edging, minimal tree loss.

  4. 04

    Evaluation

    Use and wellbeing outcomes recorded over the first two years.

Outcome

A route now used by referral, and by everyone else.