Parks and Trail Organizations Editing and Proofreading Services

A trail is marked easy. It is two kilometres, mostly flat, and has eleven steps at the far end, a boardwalk section 700 millimetres wide, and a gate that needs two hands. A wheelchair user, a parent with a pushchair and somebody with a bad hip all set out on it, and all three of them turn round at a point the sign could have told them about.

We edit what parks, trail organisations and land managers produce — trail and route descriptions, difficulty and accessibility information, trailhead signage and map text, management and maintenance plans, volunteer and stewardship documentation, funding applications and grant reports, consultation material for proposed changes, and the notices that explain a closure. Our editors work on descriptions that people rely on before they arrive.

The trail description is what determines whether a visit works, and its failure is a difficulty rating standing in for a set of measurements. Easy is a judgement made by somebody who did not need to think about it. We work through these so the trail is described by its physical features rather than by a grade — the total distance, the surface, the narrowest point, the steepest section and its length, the number of steps, the camber, and the gates and how they open; so the hardest feature is stated prominently, since a two-kilometre level path with eleven steps is not an easy trail for a substantial number of people and the steps are the only fact that matters to them; so the point at which someone would have to turn back is named with the distance to it, given that a person who knows they can do the first 1.4 km can still have a good afternoon; so surfaces are described in terms of what they do when wet, as a compacted path and a grass path are the same width and different trails in November; so the facilities are located by distance along the route — benches, toilets, shelter — because these determine feasibility more than gradient does; so any information about assistance dogs, mobility scooters or adapted cycles is stated rather than left to be enquired about; so photographs of the awkward features are provided; and so the description avoids the word accessible on its own. Descriptions written this way let people decide for themselves.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including management plans, survey data and organisational documents. We are editors rather than access consultants, land managers or surveyors, and we offer no view on accessibility, safety or land management. What we can do is replace a grade with the measurements people need.