trekosa
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A wet stony track running away over a moor between heather in flower and a drystone wall, puddles standing in the ruts, under a pale overcast sky. A woman walks away from the camera with a dog on a lead beside her.

The right walk for the dog you’ve got.

An app for the dogs who need a bit of room: the nervous ones, the reactive ones, the ones who cannot do stiles. Tell it about yours and it finds walks that suit them, kept true by the people who walk them.

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  • It runs in your phone’s browser.
  • Open to anyone. No invite needed.
  • More than two million walks, every one measured.
  • Free while we build. The first 250 households keep it.

What people tell us

Nobody has all of these, and every dog is different. They are the things we hear most, and every one of them is a question about the ground with an answer that already exists somewhere.

  • Reading the forecast, then working out whether the path will be a bog anyway, because last time it was.
  • Taking the long way round to the field with the gate, because he cannot do stiles any more and you found that out the hard way.
  • Turning back at the sheep, on a walk that was supposed to be a loop.
  • Knowing the corner you cannot see round, and shortening the lead before you reach it.
  • One of them needs an hour and the other needs twenty minutes, so one of them is always getting the wrong walk.
  • Forty minutes in the car to a full car park, then forty minutes home.
  • Asking in a group chat whether the sheep are out yet, and hoping someone replies before Saturday.

None of this is in any walking app. You learn it the hard way, over a couple of years, and it only ever covers a handful of places.

A mown path through a country park between mature oaks, a wooden fingerpost pointing to the trail and the car park, and cars parked among the trees. A woman walks the path with a dog on a lead.

What trekosa is

trekosa is an app for people who walk dogs, and a group of those people keeping each other right. You tell it about your dogs once and it finds walks that suit them rather than an average dog. What keeps it worth having is the walkers: what they found, and when they found it.

It is built for the dogs that make a walk complicated: the nervous one, the reactive one, the one who needs space, the old one who cannot manage a stile.

  • Kept true by the people who walk themThe map gets you to the gate. Walkers tell you what is on the other side of it: the stile that is broken, the field that had sheep in it on Sunday, the hour the car park fills. Every fact carries who said it and when.
  • What they like, and what they cannot doWoodland shade, a firm path, water to get into, somewhere with room. And the stiles, the grazing fields and the roadside stretches to keep off. Both halves, for every dog in the house.
  • What is actually on the groundFootpaths and rights of way, sheep and cattle, woods and water, parking and bins, and the places your council says dogs must be on a lead.
  • Quiet times, not quiet placesWalkers report the hours they find somewhere calm, so a suggestion arrives with a time attached rather than a promise about the place itself.

What it is like to use

Five questions, in the order you would actually ask them. Open the ones you want.

How does it know what suits your dog?

A page headed what your walks have to do, listing away from livestock because of Juno, away from where people gather because of Juno, no stiles or cattle grids because of Juno, away from water edges because of Pip, off the roads because of Pip, and shade among trees.

You describe each dog once: what they enjoy, what they find hard, how much room they need. Every walk is then judged on both halves, against whichever of them needs the most care.

Because a household with three dogs does not want three shortlists. It wants the one walk that works for all of them.

Where do we go today?

An Ordnance Survey map around Ripon with a pin dropped and a dashed circle around it reading starts within 1.5 kilometres. Below, a range slider set to 4 to 6 kilometres and a button reading find a 4 to 6 km walk.

Drop a pin where you are and set how far you want to travel. We look at every path inside that circle: where it goes, what it crosses, and what sits beside it.

Because on a bad day the hardest part is often not the walk. It is the deciding.

Is this one for us?

A card about one walk: six point eight kilometres, a hundred and seventeen minutes, a line saying it looks right for Juno and Pip from what you have told us, labels for livestock possible, thirty one per cent green paths and sixty nine per cent woodland, and buttons to add it or decline it.

You meet one walk at a time, picked to suit the dogs you told us about. Keep it, or say it is not the one and see the next.

Because a list of forty walks is a job to get through, not an answer.

What will we actually meet?

A section headed what might stop you: four stiles, gates or grids along the way, livestock possible where the walk passes grazing fields, and a dog order the council publishes without boundaries so it cannot be mapped.

Sheep and cattle, water, woods, stiles and gates, parking and bins, and the places your council says dogs must be on a lead.

Because for a lot of dogs it is the surprise that undoes a walk, not the distance.

These are ours now.

A list headed your walks, with kept walks named when the car park is full, Pip's short one, Long Sunday and rainy day route, each showing its shape as a small purple line, its distance and time, and a label reading no reports yet or you drew this.

Keep the ones that work and they become your own list. Call them whatever your household already calls them, and each one remembers what people have said about it.

Because after a fortnight what most people want is not another suggestion. It is the few they already trust.

What only people can tell you

We have read the maps for forty-seven counties: every path, every right of way, the fields with livestock in them, the rules councils set about dogs. That is enough to find you a walk that should be right.

It is not enough to tell you the stile at the far end has been broken since March, that there were sheep in that field on Sunday, or that the car park fills by nine. Only somebody who has been there knows that. Trekosa is where they say it, so the next person does not find out the hard way.

  • It is three taps, not homeworkKeep a walk, or say it is not the one and why. Add anything you noticed on a walk you already have. That is all of it, and you do it while you are using the app, not instead of using it.
  • Everything carries a date and a countYou can see how many people said it and when they last checked. Something from March is shown as March, so you can decide how much to trust it.
  • It goes back out to everyone near youIf someone shares a walk, the next person looking nearby can find it. It stays theirs: private unless they share it, and they can take it back at any time. It never becomes a public web page.
A section headed how sure we are, reading built from the map: nobody has walked it and reported back yet, so everything above is measurement rather than experience.
Every walk tells you where its facts came from: measured off the map, or reported by somebody who has walked it. Where nobody has been yet, it says so, so you always know the difference between good news and no news.

This part has barely started. We have done the maps, but almost nobody has reported back yet, so most walks still say “nobody has walked this and told us”. That is the truth today, and the first people to join are the ones who change it.

The maps tell you where you can walk. People tell you what it is actually like.

What we will never tell you

  • That a walk is safeNot safe, not secure, not fine off the lead. We cannot know it, the ground changes week to week, and being wrong about that once can set a household back months.
  • A top tenA ranked list sends everybody to the same place, which is the fastest way to spoil a quiet one. You get a short list for your dogs. The next person gets a different one.
  • Silence, where we know nothingIf nobody has walked it yet, the app says so. If we could not get a council's dog rules, it says that too. An empty space looks like good news, and we will not let it.

What you get instead is the date. Every fact carries who reported it, how many of them, and when it was last checked. Where our data comes from.

A converted railway path running away between bare trees, stone terraced houses just visible on the left, a bench and a fence on the right. A woman walks it with a dog on a lead.

Every county in England

We are in forty-seven counties, everything from Northumberland down to Cornwall. We have mapped each one properly, rather than guessing from a map.

We hold nothing in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Wales is next, and Scotland and Northern Ireland are not planned yet. The rules about where you can walk are different in each one, so it is not a case of copying England across the border, and we would rather tell you that than colour them in. see where we are and what is next.

Everything is free while we build. The first 250 households keep every part of Trekosa free for good. After that, the walks near home stay free, and one day the extras will cost a little. We are saying that now so it never surprises anybody later.

All of it for one thing. The confidence to get out the door.

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