Take a walk on the wild side with RIAS

World Wildlife Week (31st May to 21st June) offers a chance for everyone to connect with Britain's wildlife and celebrate the diversity of our natural heritage.

It's also a very welcome opportunity to focus on something besides recession, negative equity and the rising cost of living. There can be few better ways of getting involved than by striding out on a RIAS sponsored National Trust wild life walk.

"RIAS sponsors these walks to encourage everyone to get out and enjoy the benefits of healthy living with fresh air and spectacular scenery. And what better way to support World Wildlife Week than with a wild life walk?" says RIAS Managing Director Janet Connor. There are over 70 to choose from in the collection, and 10 of them have been selected as being particularly good for wild life watching.

The RIAS sponsored National Trust walks have been carefully composed by NT staff and volunteers, graded for length and difficulty, and are free to download from the National Trust website (nationaltrust.org.uk/walks).

Every walk sheet includes information specific to the chosen walk and shows how inexperienced or advanced walkers of all ages can experience Britain's wonderful wild life first hand. Owl encounters, badger, butterfly and bird walks, rockpool rambles or perhaps a visit to a working wildlife-friendly farm - the beauty is not knowing what's out there, but getting out and discovering it.

Programme highlights include the one mile walk through the mixed and pine woodland at Brownsea Island in Dorset, renowned for being a bird-watching paradise with avocets, peregrines, little egrets, terns, gulls and oystercatchers. It's also a haven for the rare red squirrel, Sika deer and playground to many species of butterfly such as the green hairstreak and the small copper. There's a magnificent stroll through Calke Park in Derbyshire, a National Nature Reserve, with red kites, woodpeckers and nuthatches, plus a Wind in the Willows population of stoats, weasels and badgers. See grey seals hauled out on the rocks at low tide from the wildlife trail at Cubert Walk just south of Newquay, where silver studded blue and dark green fritillary butterflies abound, and birds including the corn bunting, grey partridge fulmar, whimbrel and skylark keep wild life watchers busy.

For more information about RIAS and its products and services for the over 50s, visit rias.co.uk

Download the RIAS sponsored National Trust walks for free at nationaltrust.org.uk/walks

Find out more about World Wildlife Week at wildlifetrust.org.uk