A NEW walking trail through Dumfries has inspired over 120 people and their families to go out for a meander.
Mission Meander was created by a team of five sixth year pupils at St Joesph’s College for their Young Enterprise project.
Since launching at the start of the month it has taken off like a shot with weekly competitions as well as a month-long competition to encourage more people to get out and about.
Managing director Matthew Reid explained: “There used to be Beat the Street in Dumfries but we’ve reinvented that and made it more community-based. It uses QR codes each worth a number of points which are posted throughout Dumfries in populated areas, there’s about 50 of them in total and people scan the QR code with their mobile phone which tallies the points and enters them on to the leaderboard.
“Our month-long competition runs until March 29 and the winner who has accumulated the most points will win a prize.
“We didn’t want to make a product as such, because it can be quite difficult to create a unique selling point but with this, the only competition we had would’ve been Beat the Street but that doesn’t exist anymore.”
As the competition continues the team are preparing for the regional final of Young Enterprise and are hopeful that Mission Meander will emerge victorious. Marketing director Caitlin McCaughey added: “We had a lot of postive feedback from people, whether it’s via social media or from parents and users, it’s been going really well.
“We found that Beat the Street got a lot of good online traffic and hits, it got families out on walks and encouraged people to get out and about, so that’s why we wanted to reinvent it.
“From personal experience I know that during covid I felt a lot of comfort just staying in the house, I never wanted to go out but I think now this will help more people get back outside as the weather improves, with their pals and families.”
