Journalism of Courage
The concept behind Charlotte Ward’s X account is simple. Every day, Ward, 22, goes for a long walk, usually through the lush woods near her home in Yorkshire, England, before she sits down for dinner. And every night she posts three photos of the scenery from her walk along with a photo of what she ate.
Sometimes she heads to the Yorkshire Dales to hike the highlands, other days she traverses the streets of London, but the result is always the same: three photos of the walk, and one of what she ate. It has been a perfect recipe for her growing audience.
Since starting her @hikingshawty account in April 2024, Ward has amassed more than 170,000 followers and has built an audience of nearly 200,000 in an X community she created called “today i walked…” Many of the people who come across her posts express their desire to live a quieter life like hers, spending time in nature and baking cakes from scratch.
For Ward, who originally started her account to share photos of her hikes with friends, the attention has been surprising.
“It’s kind of crazy,” she said in a recent interview. “I posted the first one and it got a few hundred likes, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s cool.’ And then by the time I got to the third post, that one went completely viral. I can’t believe how much it’s taken off.”
Ward said she started the daily walk tradition during the COVID-19 lockdowns with her father, Sean.
“My dad has always loved walking and hiking, and he would drag us on hikes when we were younger, but I didn’t really enjoy it,” she said. “But then one night, he was just like, ‘Do you want to come for a walk with me?’ And we’ve just been walking ever since.”
Though Ward walks with her father when he’s not working, she does a majority of her hikes alone, strapping on a pair of Hoka Anacapa hiking sneakers and setting off into the woods.
By the standards of today’s artificial intelligence-driven internet, Ward’s content can feel like a return to a less complicated time — before the concept of “posting ennui” kicked in — when Instagram was filled with Nashville-filtered photos of French toast and grainy sunset pics and X was a place to post low-stakes jokes or share links to interesting articles.
But for Ward, the practice of sharing photos of her day is simply a way to stay in touch with friends, which was exactly social media’s original intended use. And her account’s popularity is evidence of nostalgia for an era before optimized algorithms.
Ward’s content has inspired other creators to go outside and share photos of their walks and the beverages and food they consume afterward, with posts in the “today i walked…” community coming from all over the world.
“I love how this account is influencing us to be outside more,” journalist Emi Eleode recently shared on X, praising Ward for offering a way for people to step back from “the noise and distractions of daily life.”
“I think a lot of people on social media do quite extreme or silly things for views,” Ward said. “My account is kind of like a change of pace — it’s more of the simple things in life.”
While Ward’s account encourages others to appreciate their surroundings, it has also given her a chance to do the same.
“Before I started walking, especially around where I live, I honestly wanted to move,” she said. “I was like: ‘I don’t like England. There’s nothing here for me.’ But as I’ve started walking around here, there’s no place I would rather live.”
