For some time, the group has used a system of walk grades (easy / moderate / challenging) which is slightly different to the standard Ramblers system. This can lead to confusion for those who walk with multiple groups, and makes it difficult for us to use the standard Ramblers Walks Manager for handling walk submissions.
To reduce confusion and allow us to streamline the walk admin process, we are moving over to using the standard Ramblers grades for all new walk submissions.
The Ramblers system has six grades:
- easy access – easy – leisurely – moderate – strenuous – technical
However, neither of the extremes is generally applicable to our group, and most of our walks fall into the “leisurely” or “moderate” category – this does make the system less fine-grained that our old one, however the precise grading often varied between leaders and the length and descriptions should provide the extra detail where needed.
In most cases, the walks we used to call “easy” or “easy/moderate” would now be graded “leisurely“, while those we used to call “moderate” or “challenging” would now be graded “moderate“.
The Ramblers “strenuous” grade is intended for walks beyond anything we generally do in Berkshire, even what we used to call “challenging” – although may apply to some walks on trips away to the mountains.
Conversely, the Ramblers “easy” grade is intended for walks on better surfaced terrain than most of what our group used to call “easy“, although this may apply to a few walks that stick to well-surfaced paths.
The full range of grades is explained on the Ramblers website, and our walk grading page has been updated.