The idea for Driving with Dogs came in 2005 when we (Lezli and David) sat on the M40 in a traffic jam for over an hour in the blazing sunshine.

Jem, our rescue Collie, was just a few months old at the time and he was panting and pacing in the back of the car, clearly desperate to cool down and have a leg stretch. We could see fields with footpaths from the motorway, but there was no way to get at them.

Later, we searched bookshops for a handy reference book with lots of short walks near motorways so that we didn't get caught out again. To our huge surprise, we couldn't find anything.

So we decided to make a small set of walk places and pubs with good food for our regular trips from the Midlands to London on the M40, and to friends in Manchester and Carlisle. We used these six or seven pubs and walks to meet up with friends along the way, and the friends wanted photocopies so they could use them too. The number of walks grew to about a dozen, and we put them online to share with the friends of the friends ...

By the beginning of 2009, we'd walked well over 1,000 miles and written walks for just about every motorway junction that it's possible to leave a motorway at. That's over 400 walks!

Walking the Dog - a handy book with about 200 walks up and down the motorway network - has been published by the RAC in 2011.  We're now working on a companion collection of great dog walks in France for 2012.

It's been an amazing journey so far, and we've still got our walking boots on ...