Table 7.

Intervention participant (person living with MCI) and PT identified facilitators to the walking intervention

Sub-themes	Intervention participant (person living with MCI) quotes
Became routine easily	I always really tried to do three. And then incidental walking, you know, you walk down to the coffee shop, walk out to [the] Marina. I never sort of counted that in my walk, it was just incidental stuff (ID45)
	I was, yes, walking mainly once a day unless I was working or anything (ID84)
Nature	The birds are around. I don’t know your birds over here too well, but my girlfriend and I managed to find a birdwatching thing so we are sort of bird-watching as well (ID01)
	Because I’m a stickybeak. I walk down to the river and walk along and see the big boats (ID29)
Already walking regularly	Walking has never been a problem to me. I could walk long distances (ID32)
	We’ve always walked and always enjoyed walking. You know, when we’ve gone on holiday we’ve had walking holidays and thoroughly enjoyed them (ID42)
Enjoyed it	I do, yes. It’s not a burden to go for a walk. I do enjoy, you know, doing things like that (ID06)
	That it does me good, that’s right, yes, and I also enjoy walking anyway (ID34)
Easy	Because it was a case of just walking, that’s all I really had to do and at a brisk rate (ID18)
	It was something that was quite easy that side of things (ID32)
Social aspect	I was looking for a park where there were lots of people, so you even look at people or just say hi or something (ID08)
	Oh, I was quite happy to walk up and down and around the park with someone, that was all (ID19)
Dogs to walk	Probably because I’ve always had dogs. I’m quite passionate that they should be exercised for motivation, stimulation, yeah (ID30)
	The dogs. I’ve got a lazy dog – he sleeps all day; he borders on his weight and he needs the exercise. That’s what gets me out the door and once I’m out the door I enjoy the walking; I enjoy the park; I enjoy the people I talk to; I enjoy the dog’s interaction with people and other dogs and I enjoy watching nature – the birds and the sky (ID65)

Sub-themes	PT quotes
Guidance from PT	Generally, when I asked them at the phone call, I think the one thing that I always get is that they feel encouraged by the phone calls and the home visits and I feel like they just do a little bit more. And I think that’s just our nature – when we know we will be followed up, we actually try and do well because we don’t want to look too bad (PT2)
	I would always say to them just start with 10 minutes, for the people who weren’t already doing it. Start with five or 10 minutes, do that over three to five sessions, if there’s no issues and you are doing okay you are doing well, with no extra pain then increase it by five minutes, and just keep doing that pattern, you know to continue to do the same thing for three to five sessions and then increase it by a small amount. And that did help people work out how to do it and go ahead (PT3)
Positive experience with people who increased their walking	I had one lady who had really poor health when she started but she was the one I got to the coordination. She was really motivated because she saw she was getting better and she increased her walking (PT1)
	I’ve certainly had my highlights with the walking in the core of people who were already walking, but then just engaged in further walking and they really noticed the benefits (PT2)

Sub-themes	Intervention participant (person living with MCI) and PT quotes
Motivation	Because it’s for my benefit, keeping the joints active, moving (ID06)
	Motivation, determination, wellbeing, health, just had to get back on my feet, yeah (ID45)
	A lot of them were already walking or they say I go walking. Most of them did walks in the morning with family, with neighbours, with friends (PT1)
	So yeah, people that were already walking, that was easy to motivate them to do a little bit more (PT3)