Hittaut is a national wellness project to encourage people to get more exercise, discover new places and get and about in nature.
“The major benefit of Hittaut is that it really gets you out and about,” says Daniel Löwenborg, coordinator for Hittaut at Uppsala University and senior lecturer at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History. “I was always out when I was younger. This has got me out and about again, seeing new places, picking blueberries. Just getting out in the forest around Uppsala.”
Daniel also enjoys the statistics that are now available.
“It will be even more fun with the statistics now we have social distancing due to the coronavirus. The whole of Uppsala University is participating together and we are also competing with our sister university in town.”
Map and checkpoints
Hittaut is comprised of numbered checkpoints that you can find using the map. There are 160 checkpoints in the urban forested areas of Uppsala at interesting and beautiful locations with various levels of accessibility. Many checkpoints are out in the forest while others are among buildings; for example, there is one near the Humanities Theatre.
Hittaut is available as a paper map or mobile app.
“The mobile app is much more relaxing. Now the main point will be to take a thermos of coffee and sandwiches and get out there without any unnecessary orienteering. There’s no risk of getting lost as the app has a GPS, meaning you can get to places you’d never reach otherwise.”
Naturally, one can also use the paper map and app in parallel. The checkpoints are also colour-coded in levels of difficulty and there is information on which ones are accessible on wheels.
Wellness challenge
Just as in 2019, the University is holding a wellness challenge with the aid of Hittaut. All departments or divisions are welcome to enter teams. The challenge involves visiting and registering at as many checkpoints as possible as a team. Registration fees for teams are paid by UpGIS, a network for people working at Geographical Information Systems (GIS) at Uppsala University.
There are currently 15 teams registered at the University but, naturally, more are welcome. Hittaut runs until the end of October.
“Simply get in touch and we will arrange a team, or you can join an existing team.”
National challenge
Uppsala University is also participating at national level with our combined teams. At the time of writing, we are in seventh place nationally, hot on the heels of SLU.
“There’s not much in it between third and seventh so if we can register a gang during the autumn we can climb the table,” hopes Daniel Löwenborg.