Why City Walks
This site seeks to make finding free, enjoyable and quality virtual tours of cities, city walks, and nature trails easier and more straight forward. Whether you like to walk at home or use treadmills and other machines at the gym, these virtual walks provide a great treadmill workout. As I ease into middle age, I’m finding health and fitness is more and more important and walking is a scientifically proven way to achieve that..
You won’t find every walk from Youtube here but the one’s you do find will have either been made by or selected by us. Youtube is great but there’s a lot of noise and clutter there. Finding good walking tours of cities can be challenging. This site separates the wheat from the chaff. We select videos based on quality. We succeed when you enjoy your walks. That’s all.
The Equipment I Use to Film These Walks
I often get asked what equipment or gear I use to film my walks. That’s something that has changed and evolved quite a bit over the years. In the interest of having a single place that I can edit I’ve created a page listing the Gear I Use. This make it much easier to keep up to date rather than links in each video post. I give you way more info than you probably want in this post but I had fun writing it.
How to Use this Site
The navigation on this site should be pretty self-explanatory but if you are new here, this is how it works. The top menu has the main navigation and primary walk “Types”. The side menu on the right has a search bar, a way to select walks by location (continent, country, and in the US, by state). There are a few ads, of course, and a way to select video by approximate walk-time. We also try to cross link to other 4K – City Walks videos from within the posts. If you have any suggestions on how to make this site better, easier to use, or want to recommend a walking channel, please contact us
Our Story
City Walks began as a side project in early 2017. Henry (that’s me, your proxy walker and virtual travel guide) got an MFA in Science and Natural History Filmmaking from Montana State University. He (me) has filmed for clients and his own projects all over the world. He’s filmed from Baffin Island in the arctic filming narwhals and polar bears to Tierra Del Fuego filming fly fishing projects and a good bit in between. I live in Livingston, MT not far north of Yellowstone National Park with my family.
In 2016, we sold our house and belongings and started a life exploring new places, spending a year slow traveling around Europe. We came back to Montana for a few months before hitting the road again for central America, back for a bit, then off to Europe again. We’ve travelled to most of the United States, a bit of Canada and hope to continue to travel as the world returns to a safe place.
I originally thought of this as a side project to go along with our TravelingMel blog and Youtube channel. Mel is my wife, a long time travel writer and social media guru. From earlier personal travels, I remembered how much I enjoyed walking and exploring as cities woke up and came alive and I thought, “Hey, maybe other people might like to share that.” Travel and making travel videos demands a lot of work and I put off my walking videos for too long.
I finally got to it in Edinburgh. If I’d known how well these videos would be received I would have taken more opportunities to film over the next few months. Life gets in the way sometimes so I didn’t start really filming regularly until 2018. Since then, I’ve been sharing 1-3 walks per week to the tune of almost 400 walks in 20 countries and at least 20 states.
Not Just Cities
Contrary to the name, I also make virtual nature walks. We live in Montana, and we have so many epic trails to explore and share. We’ve also found a lot of great walks along beaches and coasts in the other states and countries we’ve visited.
What I Love About Making Virtual Walks
I’ve built up a great audience too and by that I mean the quality of viewers I’ve been able to interact with. I’ve learned a ton as well, mostly by making mistakes and getting great feedback.
Many things have surprised me over the years. I think the best surprise was how much I enjoy interacting with viewers in the comments section of Youtube. I love hearing people’s success stories and sharing their memories. They’ve added a tremendous amount of great local knowledge to the videos. And, viewers’ comments have kept me motivated to put in the hours and miles it takes to keep the channel moving forward. Although the most flattering one called me “the Bob Ross of Walking Videos”! So, Thanks!
