Making it easy for millions of people to walk and cycle to the local places they want to go

Sustrans' Connect2 is the groundbreaking walking and cycling project funded by the BIG Lottery Fund, that is transforming local communities across the UK. People in Connect2 communities will be able to take pride in places that are benefitting from better walking and cycling links as the project rolls out over the next five years.

Behind the scenes at Sustrans, the Connect2 team have been working closely with the Big Lottery Fund to get the winning Living Landmarks: The People’s Millions project underway. 

Over the next 5 years (to 2013) £50 million from the Big Lottery Fund will be matched with more than £100 million of other funding to create dedicated, high quality local walking and cycling networks benefiting millions of people across the UK from Devon to Perthshire.

Sustrans is now working with our many partners to ensure that the 79 schemes are the best they can be, and that the community is being involved as much as possible so Sustrans’ Connect2 really creates the right environment to enable people to walk and cycle to school, the shops, to visit friends, for leisure and pleasure. 

Over the next five years and on a rolling schedule, work will get underway in communities throughout the UK. Local activity has already begun in Newtownabbey and Wicken Fen.

So it is with great anticipation, and much celebration, that the first Sustrans’ Connect2 scheme opened in Scotland this July (2008) to a skirl of bagpipes and the sound of marching feet. The people of Dumfries are now be able to bypass the bypass by path, as a picture-perfect, disused railway viaduct spanning the River Nith is transformed into a walking and cycling route.

A local resident who’s already been out enjoying the new path with her dog says: “The viaduct was the missing link. I feel so lucky having this on my doorstep; it has opened up the whole town to me. I used to have to get in my car to go to the supermarket, now I just head out with my dog.”

Sustrans’ Connect2 is funded by a £50 million Big Lottery Fund grant after the UK public voted the scheme the winner of the People’s Millions Lottery contest on ITV1 in December 2007.