“Walking Dissolves Barriers”: The Young People Finding Friendship & Community In Hiking

It’s been an emotional few weeks for Jeb Jagne. A 24-year-old Londoner, he never saw himself as a hiker or leader. Both changed. While out one evening, he spotted five people he vaguely knew having dinner — and the sight made him “burst into tears”. Not because he wasn’t invited: they were happy tears. The group he saw all met not too long ago via Jagne’s monthly hiking group, Overground, and seeing that his efforts had resulted in real friendships was moving. This was everything the hiking group was about. The next rewarding moment for Jagne came at the start of April this year, when, one Saturday morning in the overcast weather, 500 strangers aged 22 to 30 came together to hike in Surrey Hills. Overground had gone viral on TikTok and grown massively from the original 40 attendees. People — many of whom came alone — were willing to get up early, take a 90-minute train away from home, trudge on through mud, walk uphill, and get to know people along the whole way. It’s one thing for a video to get likes and shares, and it’s another for people to proactively make a note of the details and turn up. At the end of the hike, they all crammed in and posed for a photo.

While Gen Z is branded the loneliest generation, we’re seeing that people want to change that: Book clubs are booming in popularity, running clubs are becoming a regular sight along city roads, and now hiking is yet another way young people are seeking out new connections and friendships. It’s an activity that was once associated with older generations, but now on TikTok, an app where 60% of users are Gen Z, there are 3.5million videos under #hiking. The latest Sport England Active Lives report found that hill and mountain walking has continued to grow in popularity more than any of the other 80 sports assessed. Young people are partly responsible for that, as those aged 25-34 are the most likely to regularly participate in hiking, doing it at least twice in a month.  

Walking and talking, this is what Jagne and his peers wanted. “A lot of my friends were moving away, so I was confronted for the first time with actively trying to make friends. Also, I’m a florist so I work unsociable hours,” Jagne says. He started finding walks to do, initially solo, but then reached out on social media in a bid to find others who would be up for joining. “What started as something I really needed in order to add structure to my routine has now become other people’s structure. It’s become that anchor. It now exists for other people,” he adds. “Whenever I would tell people what I was doing, their first thought when they hear ‘walking group’ is 80 year olds, right? But young people want to get outdoors, and as a queer person of colour I never see myself represented in the outdoors.” 

Hiking has a diversity problem: Only 1% of visitors to National Parks in the UK are people from ethnic minority backgrounds. A study published last year by hiking group Ramblers found the “whitest parts” of England and Wales have 144% more local paths to walk, meaning those in ethnically diverse areas are less likely to hike due to having less access. But this is a long-standing problem that people have been trying to fix for years: The collective Diversify Outdoors started in the US in 2017, and aims to encourage more Black, queer and minority background people to occupy outdoor spaces, such as trails. So when Jagne says the attendees of his walks “represent the diversity in London”, that’s no small feat.

Walking “dissolves barriers” between people, as Katie Holmes, 27, puts it. She’s one of Overground’s attendees and joined in search of friends. Having moved from Dublin to London in March 2021, she “struggled to anchor [herself] as a true ‘Londoner’,” she says. “Leaving behind the tight-knit community of Dublin, where everyone seemed to know everyone else, I soon realised I really felt out of my depth. Loneliness crept in.” Then the TikTok algorithm brought her to Overground and she decided to turn up. Jagne says his DMs are flooded with people asking if they can come to his walks alone. “I always say we actually encourage it to get that full experience. People meet via the group then return together the next time. It’s really beautiful to see these friendships forming,” he says.

Hiking might seem intimidating to the inexperienced, but it doesn’t have to be. Emily Thornton, 35, and Lucy Hird, 30, both from Manchester, are two women behind a social media account Soft Girls Who Hike. They coined the term “soft hiking” a year ago and define it as “focusing less on the activity and difficulty level, instead thinking about being kind to yourself when hiking in the outdoors. The goal is not to reach the finish line at the fastest pace but to take your time and enjoy the surroundings.” Thornton and Hird came to this mindset after trying to walk with “seasoned hikers” whose style they found to be strenuous and less enjoyable. Since taking up hiking together, Hird says: “We feel we know each other even better than we ever did before, and have lots of deep chats on our walks.” The pair then joined Merrell Hiking Club, which champions a “female-led space”. Their favourite hike so far took place in the Lake District last year, where they met people who’d been following their soft hiking journey online. “We had feedback that people were forming new friendships through hikes, including two young mums who went out together with their babies in prams,” Hird adds. Making ventures like hiking accessible to a wider canon of people — not just gym buffs — can only be a good thing when it comes to easing societal isolation. 

Muslim Hikers, a group that welcomes people of all backgrounds but predominantly has Muslim attendees, walks around the UK and fosters a space in which Islamic people feel safe in the outdoors. When modest dressing, for example, is rarely accounted for in form-fitting fitness gear, it’s vital that people of faith still feel welcomed. Safura Said, 30, from Halifax, West Yorkshire, joined for her 29th birthday last January. “I wanted to spend the last year in my 20s by pushing myself out of my comfort zone and being a better version of myself,” she says. “Usually, I allow my anxiety to get the better of me and this ends up keeping me from trying the things I want to. But this time, I signed up to one of the hikes not knowing anyone which was a huge step for me.” And it’s a good thing she did, as she has now made “lifelong connections and friends”. Said adds: “I have always lacked the feeling of being part of a community and belonging. For the first time, I felt like I belonged. I came across so many other single mums like myself too. Hiking has become an integral part of my life.”

Anecdotally, a friend living in Amsterdam tells me hiking has become a “thing” out there, too. Another person in New York says they hike with Outlandish, and travel an hour or two out of Brooklyn for walks. Are we embracing the mental health benefits of being outdoors, while looking for company? Is the low-cost factor appealing? Annabel Streets, author of 52 Ways to Walk, says all of this is valid, but the truth is walking sets you up for building connections — whether we realise it consciously or not. “We find it much easier to open up to people when we don’t have to be eyeballed by them,” Streets explains. “There’s a rhythm to walking that helps us relax, in a way that we don’t sat across a table from someone. We’re more compassionate when outside than in spaces with low ceilings, research suggests. Studies have also shown that we often fall into step with people we like or expect to like, which psychologists call synchronisation. When we walk at the same pace and rhythm as another person we produce oxytocin — sometimes called the love or bonding hormone — which makes us feel closer to our walking companion, happier and more relaxed. This means we’re more likely to share information or self-disclose, and therefore to bond more quickly.” Hiking with a group also makes us feel safer, she adds, and speaks to our deep history, in that we “evolved walking as groups of nomadic hunter-gatherers, so walking in a group feels very natural.”

Jagne speculates his generation’s turn away from the heavy boozing that previously defined youth social culture is to do with the increased popularity of sports and outdoor activities. Streets thinks there’s something in this too. “It’s in the news a lot at the moment that our age group is just not drinking,” Jagne says. “I used to be a DJ and I met so many great friends through nightlife. I almost think now, if you were moving cities, aren’t big on going out, and you just started a new job, you wouldn’t know where to look for friends. Like, where would you meet people?” Outdoors, with the latest hiking kit, it now seems.