A GOOD brisk walk at the beginning of the school day gets the circulation going and helps the children to stay alert.

That is the advice to Worcestershire's parents from full-time dad Tony Hobbis of BBC television's Fat Nation programme, who walks his six children to their respective schools each day.

"I also benefit from walking the children to school as I suffer from back problems and the walk helps loosen joints that have stiffened up overnight," he said.

Mr Hobbis is lending his support to the Department for Transport initiative to encourage more families to walk to school in 2005.

At 10 Worcestershire schools the concept has already been embraced by those operating "walking buses".

These are groups of up to 20 children with adult supervisers, each wearing highly visible jackets, who walk to and from school together each day.

The "bus" starts from a given point at the same time and children either join at the start or are collected on the way.

"The first one was put into operation at Honeybourne, near Evesham, three or four years ago and there are one or two still under preparation," said Worcestershire road safety officer Roger Woodward.

"We are actively promoting walking to school, but there is still a tendency towards clogging up the streets with cars.

"When we run a specific promotion like Walk to School Week people change their habits for a while, but they tend to get back into their cars on the first rainy day."