“We set up PQA because, as two queer people, we wanted to be part of a collective of other queer people visibly taking up space in the outdoors,” they explain. “There is a very specific aesthetic to a lot of outdoors activities and we wanted a space where people could enjoy themselves in the outdoors without feeling like they need to look a certain way.”

Not having to fit in with a certain aesthetic is a theme that comes up repeatedly when talking to people about moving as queer people. Hannah Thornley, who set up the Camden Belles football club, explains that “worrying about what we look like – or how we are going to fit in – can be such a barrier to joining a sports club.”

She goes on: “It’s important that these spaces exist as they create a real sense of community and a place where people can achieve their personal goals – whether that’s making more friends or becoming the next Alex Scott or Ellen White.” Similarly, personal trainer Annie Celeste founded The Queer Space back in 2017, when all she could find were “heteronormative binary representations of what fitness ‘should’ look like”.

“All of them started from the conversation of ‘your body isn’t good enough’,” she recalls. It was in a bid to change that for other people that motivated Celeste to set up queer and trans exclusive classes for “all bodies, abilities, genders and levels”.

LGBTQ+ fitness spaces: “I went to my first openly queer fitness class and here’s why I’ll be going back”