Little Ridge Primary School participants in Beat The Street

Beat The Street returns for 2018

Beat The Street, the immensely popular walking and cycling game that encourages schools, businesses, community groups, friends, neighbours and families to spur each other one and compete to get more active in their community returns to East Sussex this summer. Niall Norbury writes.

Running from 6 June to 25 July, Beat the Street will see towns and villages in East Sussex turned into a massive game where players can earn points and prizes for themselves and their team by exploring their area on foot or by bicycle.

During this free, fun challenge close to 500 sensors called Beat Boxes will appear on lampposts across East Sussex. Players can pick up a Beat the Street card and map at their local library, leisure centre or selected pharmacies and start to play the game by swiping as many Beat Boxes as possible to earn points and win prizes.

Teams across the county will be competing against each other to see who can travel the furthest. Players can create their own teams with their friends or colleagues or register to join the existing team of a local school, community group or workplace to be in with a chance of winning hundreds of pounds worth of sport and fitness vouchers.

Last year, more than 42,000 people from across East Sussex walked, ran and cycled an incredible 230,000 miles in seven weeks – the distance between the Earth and the Moon. This year the organisers behind Beat the Street are promising that the game will be even bigger and better .

In addition to the participating areas last year, due to popular demand, the game will be coming to new areas including Pevensey, Robertsbridge, Ticehurst, and Ringmer; and new touring Beat Boxes will also be used in village challenges on selected weekends. Across all of the games there will also be more opportunities for registered players, teams and schools to win a range of fantastic prizes!

Victoria Spencer-Hughes, Consultant in Public Health, said: “We‘re really excited to be bringing the Beat the Street competition back to East Sussex this summer. We were blown away by the popularity of the game last year with more than 40,000 players of all ages making it the biggest Beat the Street game in the world ever! We’ve listened to people’s feedback and have expanded the game so that even more towns and villages can take part and teams can win more prizes than before.”

Dr David Warden, chair of NHS Hastings and Rother CCG, said: “The team behind Beat the Street have continued to work with local schools, communities and businesses across East Sussex over this last year, promoting the benefits of keeping active. With the expanded game we hope to be able to reach even more people over the next year.”

To find out more about Beat the Street – visit Beat The Street. Alternatively, contact team.eastsussex@beatthestreet.me for more information and to enter a team for this year’s competition.

Beat the Street is funded by NHS Hastings and Rother CCG, NHS Eastbourne, Hailsham and Seaford CCG and East Sussex Public Health. The initiative forms part of a comprehensive programme of activity to improve health through the Personal and Community Resilience workstream of East Sussex Better Together; and as part of Connecting 4 You in the west of the county.

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