Way back when, before the plague, I started my Patreon with the idea that I’d be writing about all the traveling I’d be doing. I’d looked at my schedule and I was supposed to be traveling at least once a month, every month, for the following nine months. Plus, there would be additional trips after that.
Then the world shut down, and I didn’t go anywhere for quite some time.
Well, I miss traveling. Really do. And I’m not getting any younger. So it’s time to get out there again.
For our first biggish trip, we’re going to the UK, and walking the length of Hadrian’s Wall, in 2024.
I’m going to go through some of my initial planning and decision-making for this trip. There will be updates as more decisions get made and things get done. Then, there will be the actual walk, plus a report afterward.
Initial Decisions
What made me decide to go on such a walk?
It started off with the bathroom remodel, actually. That was a lot (A LOT) of physical labor, day after day. Neither my husband nor I have the stamina we once did. Yes, we’re older, but we’re not that old.
Now, exercising for the sake of exercising has never really been my thing. I’ve generally always had to have some sort of goal in mind.
So I started thinking about the things I could do to build stamina. Going on a long walk would do the trick. Particularly one of the longer walks.
I was looking at the Camino de Santiago, as I know people who have recently walked it. However, it didn’t call to me as something that I wanted or needed to do.
But while looking at it, I stumbled across other European walks.
Such as Hadrian’s Wall, which is 84 miles or so across the UK.
That seemed much more my speed, quite frankly. Plus, it was something that my husband was excited about as well.
It means a lot of training, as we’ll be walking a large number of miles every day. Which, quite frankly, is a big part of the reason why we’re doing it. To get into better shape and build up our stamina.
Therefore, we made the decision and the commitment to do the walk.
Next—when should we go? Definitely not 2023, but 2024. We are currently planning on going in September. Flights to the UK will be cheaper, and there’s a convention that we might be able to go to as well, making this even more of a business trip.
How many days will we take to walk the wall? That is still up in the air. More than six days. Maybe eight or nine. I haven’t figured that out yet. I’m not interested in doing 18-19 miles in a single day, followed by more days of walking. I’d like to keep it to 15 miles per day or less.
What direction will we go? West to east or east to west? Probably west to east, as we’re going in September, and the prevailing winds will mostly be at our backs. If we were going in the heat of summer, we might go the other way, as fresh wind in our faces might be nice.
Who will do the booking? At this time, I’m thinking that I’m going to arrange all our travel myself, instead of going with a tour that would book everything for us. The cost difference appears significant. At this time, I’m thinking that booking my own B&Bs, bunkhouses, etc. will cost half as much as going through a tour. So though it will be a lot of work on my part, it should be worth it.
I think that’s all the initial decisions for now. I’ve been walking at least 10K steps every day since the start of July. My goal is to slowly increase my steps until I’m doing at least 12.5K per day, which for me, is about 5 miles.
Next year, I’ll start taking long walks regularly, training up to 15 miles per day. It’s a large commitment of time, I know. Maybe I’ll start listening to audiobooks and include them as part of my reading time. We’ll see.
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