The Man Who Started a Walking Group at 80, and Changed Dozens of Lives

On a Tuesday morning in Heath Hayes, a group of people gather outside the library. Some have walked for years. Some are still building up their confidence. One lady turns up just for the chat and the coffee, because right now that’s all she can manage – but she is more than welcome. Bob Pitcher would not have it any other way.

Bob started the Fiveways Strollers five years ago. He was 80 years old. What began as a modest hiking group for people who wanted fresh air and a bit of exercise became something he never quite planned for: a community that has quietly transformed the lives of the people in it.

“You suddenly realise it’s actually more than a walking group,” Bob tells me, in the understated way of someone who has watched it unfold week after week. “It’s a kind of social group.” He pauses. “When you actually hear the tales from the folk, you know.”

I spent a morning with the Strollers and came away with a head full of moments I wasn’t expecting. The people I spoke to were remarkably open — frank about loneliness, about loss, about life before the group. But that honesty made sense. You can’t fully understand what the Fiveways Strollers means to many of the members without first understanding what what they were missing.

One member, who lost her husband and found herself alone after years of company, describes her life before the group in two words that stop you in your tracks: “Talking to the wall.” She laughs when she says it, but there is something real underneath it. She heard about the Strollers through someone she had worked with 40 years ago. That one conversation, she says, was “the biggest turnaround ever.” Now she goes out at weekends. She goes on holidays. She has friends. None of that, she says plainly, would have happened without this group.

Another member moved to the area from Hertfordshire with her husband, who was waiting for a hip operation at the time. She spotted Bob’s post on Facebook and thought a walking group sounded like a good way to meet people. Their first walk turned out to be five miles. Her husband, she laughs, “was absolutely shattered when we got back.” They have come back every single week since. Four of the friends she has made through the group are taking a coach to London next week to see two shows. “These are people,” she says, “that you wouldn’t have met if you hadn’t been coming to the group.”

A third member returned to Staffordshire after eleven years living in France, having lost her husband. She knew nobody. She saw the group advertised on Facebook and spent weeks working up the courage to go, convinced she would have to walk into a pub alone. In the end she told herself: you’ve just got to go for it. They were all stood outside. “Then it just went better and better,” she says quietly. She has made quite a lot of friends. They go on holiday together now.

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The Strollers meet every Tuesday at 10am, setting off from Heath Hayes Library for a gentle walk before returning for refreshments and a good long chat. There is also a longer Sunday ramble for those who want more miles. Bob’s motto, if you could call it that, is simple: walk to the slowest pace. Slower walkers go at the front so they set the speed. Nobody gets left behind, and there is always someone at the back to make sure of it.

The group runs in all weathers. Rain, shine, and the odd grey Staffordshire Tuesday that is, frankly, all of them at once. The age range runs from babies in buggies to members well into their eighties. One lady currently unable to walk still turns up for the coffee and the company. A man used to join on a mobility scooter, purely for the social side. Bob tells me this as though it is the most natural thing in the world, which for him it clearly is.

He has now trained six of his members to lead walks themselves. The group, he hopes, will carry on long after him. “Who knows?” he says, with a grin that suggests he has a few more years in him yet.

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The Fiveways Strollers is listed as a walking group, and walking is what brings people to the library where they meet. But what keeps them coming back, week after week, in all weathers, is something harder to put in a Facebook post. It is the feeling of being known. Of having somewhere to be on a Tuesday morning. Of finding, sometimes when you least expect it, people who become genuinely important to you.

Bob Pitcher built that. He did it at 80, with a Facebook post and a good heart, and he has kept showing up every single week since — holidays excepted. That seems worth celebrating.

It isn’t the only thing he shows up for. Every September, away from the weekly routine of the Strollers, Bob organises a sponsored walk on Cannock Chase in memory of his late wife, Eileen. It raises money for MASE, a charity that supports local families affected by Alzheimer’s. It is, in its own quiet way, cut from the same cloth as the Strollers: people showing up for each other, year after year.

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Walking for Eileen 2026

Now in its 10th year — read about Bob’s other annual walk, on Cannock Chase.