Collecting things on your walks can provide yet more motivation for your miles – and a powerful source of precious memories. Here are some ideas we collected from the community…

Annabel Owens collects sticks useful and decorative: ‘In my head I’m a hobbit going on an adventure!’

Glenna Waterhouse collects ‘a stone or a shell from my walks and write on it where it came from and the date’...

Alison Jackson collects post boxes: ‘Some rare, some in beautiful locations, it makes a walk interesting if you spot them, and it saves having a cupboard full of stuff I do not know what to do with.’

Catherine Muirhead collects Peak and Northern Footpaths Society signs. There are 499 in Yorkshire, Staffordshire and the Forest of Bowland.

Cathrine Callow collects fossils, nice stones and sea shells on her walks.

Elaine Brown collects a bracelet for every 100 miles she walks…

Katrina Scott collects Cuthbert's beads (actually fossilised crinoids) from Lindisfarne…

Eloise Harris finds collecting sea-glass really therapeutic and got this lot from Seaham in County Durham.

Emmanuelle Ashford collects photos of benches: ‘I am naturally lazy and find benches inviting. I imagine the people who sat on the same bench before me, what they were feeling or thinking’