Get started mapping and illustrating your own favourite local walks

Take a virtual walk through Carluke and learn how to make a map of your favourite route through the five Make Your Way areas

- Mark Archibald, Archibald Photography, Make Your Way Project Photographer

Ok...I know it is cold out there, but this is the perfect time to get out, get active with the family and try something new for the new year.

As part of the brilliant Make Your Way project (link below) why not create a map of a route in your local area (its great fun and really simple to do this right on your phone as you walk...see the link at the end of this post). Download and print the Do You My Map instructions on the right. We'd love you to share your routes with us and if you could illustrate it with photographs, that would be even better!

Let me take you on a photographic walk of the schools route already prepared by the Make Your Way team. We start and end at the train station, so no need to bring the car! (Make Your Way is all about promoting active travel after all).

Then through some lovely woodland stretching alonside the railway line, down the steps to the edge of the residential housing estate.

We continue along a narrow vennel and past St John’s Church towards the town centre. There are some really interesting details to pick out and photograph in all the five villages of the Make Your Way project. See what you can spot and share it with the CAVLP Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages (see links on the right and use #MakeYourWay).

We turn up high street at the crossing point of Chapel Street and High Street, past the Black Bull in and the old Parish Council Chambers Building.

Then on to the town square (or “Green”) where the war memorial resides.

The old Carluke High Mill is a short walk from here and is well worth a look as this is an historically important building which is currently on the Buildings at Risk Register (see link on right).

The view from this high part of town is really lovely. Photographing in the winter cold can bring a special quality of light to your photographs.

Then begins the return amble back to the station and, arguably, the nicest part of the walk. Cross over the bridge at Jock’s Burn and continue on the path through the trees.

…and back through the housing estate to the station and the train journey home.