Walk this way . . .

Have you seen this sign (above) with a little man walking urgently? I'm afraid I thought it was a sign pointing the way to the…

Have you seen this sign (above) with a little man walking urgently? I'm afraid I thought it was a sign pointing the way to the nearest Gentleman's Convenience. So why did it say Sli na Slainte underneath it, I wondered?

If I had thought about it, I would have said because it might be a healthier way to go about things. You know . . . finding an actual designated lavatory rather than some casual alternative. But it was never something that exercised my mind, until last week when Paddy Murphy, the chief executive of the Irish Heart Foundation, told me proudly how so many European countries were absolutely delighted with this Sli na Slainte scheme that they were applying for permission to set it up themselves and little notices with the Irish word "Sli" on them are going up all over Finland, Sweden, Germany and Denmark even as we speak. This was such a puzzlement that I went to see him to hear more.

Apparently these little men are figures of healthy walking people, and the signs are placed exactly one kilometre apart - so what you need to do to have a nice healthy heart is to find one of these little men on a blue sign and walk in the direction it points until you've passed two more. Then you've done your recommended three kilometres a day, and your heart is feeling better already.

It's not the only thing, of course. There's the blood pressure, the smokes, the drink and the diet. But the Irish Heart Foundation says that walking is a positive thing, plus it's not connected with denial and being told not to do things, and that's why people like it.

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And they do like walking: in a survey, when people were asked what their favourite exercise was, 47 per cent of Irish people opted for walking.

Well, they would, wouldn't they? I mean, if the potato is going to get up off the couch and exercise, then maybe walking is the obvious thing to say you'd do.

Not so. In Germany, for example, when they say exercise they mean the gym, while in the US huge numbers of people list gardening as exercise. They mean digging and heaving, not pottering and pulling the odd dead petal off a flower. But the difference in national ideas of exercise is interesting.

When the Irish Heart Foundation discovered that people liked knowing and measuring how far they had walked they wanted to think of a way of capitalising on this.

It's not really practical to issue everyone with pedometers; they thought about milestones like the old fashioned ones. But we don't - or at least we should not - think in miles any more. Flagstones were used as a part of the initial set-up but the disadvantage with them is that they're not easy to see, and they can get covered in leaves or snow, or indeed they can split or crack in the frost.

So in the end they decided on what they hoped was attractive street furniture - blue and yellow posts, as illustrated here, with the little man walking and a heart sign on it for identification. There are 37 local authorities in the country and their managers meet once a month. When the notion to set up Sli na Slainte walks with little signs in their areas was presented to them last year, 12 said yes immediately and the rest have since agreed.

From the local authorities' point of view it's a relatively inexpensive way of showing they care about health, and it only costs about £120 per kilometre to put up the signs, plus the cost of labour. The policy has been to identify existing walks in the area rather than sending people off to get hopelessly lost in warrens of small streets.

In Dublin, for example, you'll see a whole rake of Sli signs from Howth to Bray more or less along the DART route. And there are plans for the DART to feature maps showing passengers where the posts are and giving a little information about why it would be good to walk three kilometres a day.

Weight Watchers have little leaflets about where to find the walks, and some hotels have them. Health clubs and big companies have them on their noticeboards. The idea is that maybe Bus Eireann would get involved by putting Sli directions up on their carousels, and that community groups and residents associations would do similar things. The theory is that once people get used to going for a walk along a Sli route they will need it identified for them whenever they go anywhere else.

There are going to be forest walks with Sli on them, but because what is appropriate as street furniture would look intrusive in our woods, the material for the signs will be in some magic metal that won't decay but which looks like actual wood.

THE scheme is paid for by local authorities, but there is also European funding. And when the European partners announced they were giving a sum towards it, the various heart foundations in Europe started to look at it and thought it was exactly what they needed.

I'm not entirely sure why they didn't just set up their own walks in Europe without saying a word to us, but it's a compliment to our country that they decided to buy the whole package, including the word Sli. The Irish Heart Foundation took out a patent on it, and this morning there are many Germans, Danes, Swedes and Finns setting out on their Sli, which is kind of hard to take in.

The interest in it has snowballed - those who already walk or jog like the notion of simple, instant measurement for their regular programme.

And those of us who are down in the lowest foothills think that maybe staggering from one little blue and yellow man to another might give us a sense of achievement and may even be within our reach. I am a very unlikely spokeswoman for it all, possibly the last person they would want to have involved, but I had this theory that, like myself, you may have woefully misunderstood the signs.

And also, you might not have known how they are going mad for it in foreign lands.

If you think it's a good idea and you don't see any of these blue and yellow signs in your area, then write to your local county manager and ask him or her to set one up.

You could also ask for a leaflet from The Irish Heart Foundation, 4 Clyde Road, Dublin 4.