The BlackSmiths Arms

The Northern Trek is a new 560‑mile challenge route stretching from Chatsworth House to the summit of Ben Nevis.

Its creator, avid walker Ken Heptonstall, asked me to turn his idea into a fully functioning website that could grow with the project.

Ken already had a professionally designed interactive prototype in Adobe XD. My role was to take those designs and turn them into a fast, responsive, content‑managed website that he could update every day.

What I Delivered

Hand‑built responsive front‑end
I translated the Adobe XD prototype into clean, responsive HTML and CSS, ensuring the site worked smoothly across mobiles, tablets and desktops.

Umbraco CMS build

I built custom templates in Umbraco 13, giving Ken full control over:

• Route information
• Daily updates
• Image galleries
• Maps and GPX downloads
• FAQs
• Videos

The client updates the site himself without needing technical support.

Technical SEO from day one

With a limited promotional budget, organic performance mattered. I built the site with:

• Clean, semantic HTML
• Fast loading times
• Logical content structure
• Search‑friendly URLs
• XML sitemaps and schema
• Optimised metadata

Within the first month, the site was already attracting hundreds of visitors a week from Google alone.

Impact

The Northern Trek has gained attention far beyond its initial audience. It has been featured on:

• The i newspaper
• The Scotsman
• Other regional news sites

This early visibility helped establish the Trek as a recognised long‑distance challenge.