I Would Walk 1000 Miles

The whole shebang. It will change, I’m sure, but only in response to advice, offers of accommodation and my aching feet once the walk starts.

I’ve worked on the assumption I can clear 15-18 miles each day. I may be able to do more, I might struggle to manage that much on other days. As such, the “day” count is very approximate.

The grand total, according to the RAC Routeplanner is 1031 miles, and I estimate 68 days of walking (plus rest/touristy days). This is based on 15-18 miles a day, though I still reckon I can do more than that. Shielah is going to try and get a pedometer to me so hopefully I can work out fairly accurately mow many miles I actually do.

As before, if you spot somewhere you know on the route plan because - say - you live there, then a bed for the night would be hugely appreciated!

Hopefully by Tuesday coming I will have a fairly well-planned route on the site for you to peruse. Updates to the existing information include the fact that I’ll likely be starting in Monaco which adds another country/principality/whatever to the list and that I’ll be diverting slightly from the most direct route to take in some nice places.

These include Gelsenkirchen in Germany, which is a twin city of Newcastle. I was considering aiming for as many twin cities as I could, but Bergen and Groningen are simply too far out of the way. However, I’m hoping to go to Haifa as part of my visit to Israel on the way back to Europe. I just found out that it, too, is a twin city of Newcastle!

As things stand, I have an approximate total of 952 miles so far, so I need to add a couple of detours. A shame I don’t think I can cross any more countries without adding far more than that. For the record, I’ve been using the RAC Route Planner to calculate distances as well as the AA road atlas from Dymocks. There’s been one point where the route I’d pencilled and the one on the RAC site didn’t agree, but combining the two has been very useful.

Tomorrow, I’m intending to spend some time buried in Lonely Planet guides in a bookshop in Brisbane working out what I can do in lots of these towns I’ve never heard of!

OK, so I’ve had about half a dozen emails from people on CouchSurfing.com, but given how recently the article was posted there I’m quite pleased. One offer of accommodation in Switzerland, one of someone to accompany for some of the walk and several words of encouragement. One guy told me about a friend of his who walked across Finland - roughly 800 miles - and it took her 2 months. So I could be about right on my estimates, allowing for stop-off time.

Keep ‘em coming, folks!

The kind folk at CouchSurfing.com have popped an article about the walk on their news page. Nothing you folks don’t already know, but you can check it out here (I’m not sure if you need an account to read the news, though).

I’ve already had two people get in touch as a result, one asking if he can walk with me! Good stuff!

I also got a reply back from a major telecoms company this morning regarding another begging letter. Nothing positive as yet and I won’t name them unless something good happens, but it’s all progress.

OK, I’ve added a whole two new pages and updated the template of this blog a bit. Please help publicise the event and the web site. As well as posters, there are now also icons you can pop on your own blog, or in the signature you use on forums. Just link it to this page, please! Finally, I’ve plotted a basic route. It needs tweaked and made more precise, stops need to be calculated and so on, but it’s a start and it’s available from the route page.

They pinched my idea! OK, so probably not, but it seems that this year’s Red Nose Day charity single is a parody of “I Would Walk…” called “Roll 500 Miles“. Another good cause, so check it out. I’ve not heard it yet - must get to a broadband connection. Tomorrow I should have a map available of the walk and hopefully an idea of the towns I will be stopping at.

In spare moments over the last week or so I’ve been looking at the route for the walk and plugging it to everyone I’ve met. Today, though, I managed to catch up with Mike who founded Blue Dragon, the charity which will benefit from the trek.

He happened to be in Sydney doing some fundraising so I stayed on an extra night to make sure I could catch up with him.

I also got chatting to a Swiss guy in my dorm last night. He gave me some pointers on the tunnels, hills and roads in Switzerland - I can’t walk through the tunnels but many of them have very nice, and direct, hiking tracks over the top. Others, however, just have long winding roads!

To make things easier, I’ve also decided to relax my "1000 mile" rule slightly. Without accurate route-planning software or an expensive set of cartographic equipment and highly detailed roadmaps there’s always going to be a margin for error in the distance travelled. Inevitably, there’ll be road closures or I’ll find somewhere I’d planned to walk across being impassable to foot traffic.

Instead, the rule will be changed so that I walk at least 1000 miles, but still as close to that amount as possible. Use of transport (with the exception of the ferry) is still forbidden.

My rough route at present can be viewed easily on a European map. To include as many countries as possible, I’ll start in North Italy. This is also handy as I want to travel Italy for a week or two sightseeing before I begin!

I’ll begin very close to the Swiss/French borders so there won’t be much of Italy in there but it will count. Starting around the Tunnel Du Grand-St-Bernard, draw a line straight up from there to Metz in France. I’ll have to skip around the Lac de Neuch&acarat;tel, probably to the east, but otherwise it’s a straight-ish line. From Metz, north into Luxembourg and out of the top of that country into Belgium. I’ll then vear slightly north-east in a Dusseldorf direction so that I enter Germany. From there, as straight a line as I can to Amsterdam and then Ijmuiden for the ferry.

A friend has said she can get a pedometer to me (thank you Sheilah!) so I can keep track of how far I’ve actually walked day by day. If anyone wants to take that route and shove it through Autoroute or similar (and ensure that no tunnels, autobahns, motorways, etc are included on the route), I’d be interested to see how close to 1000 miles it comes.

Again, I would like to thank Dymocks of Australia for the AA Road Map of Europe which I’m using to plan the route. It’s making life easier when I show it to the Europeans in the hostels who can then tell me what the roads are like!

Finally for today - posters! Please feel free to download and distribute. I’ll try and get permanent links to these on the sidebar shortly. In the meantime, download them from these links:

• MS Word / OpenOffice Document
• Adobe Acrobat (PDF)

Note that the posters mention that some organisations (say, a person in the office or reception at your business) could collect money on my behalf. If you intend to do this, please contact me first so that if anyone asks, I can confirm you’re kosher!

Hopefully we’re on to a roll here, folks. The kind people at Dymocks, the best book store in Australia ever, have donated a 2007 AA Road Map of Europe to me for use in planning the walk, and (hopefully) aiding me in not getting lost while on it. So I’d like to say a huge thank you to Margaret, Janet and everyone else who has helped. I can now spend the next couple of days plotting routes and getting more and more panicked as I realise exactly how far 1000 miles really is.

Marina just let me know that the kind folk at Elastoplast have sent me a letter (via herself) saying that they can’t help with the whole trek but have mailed me a bundle of plasters, sunscreen and the like as a kind gesture.

Thank you, people! I’m sure I’ll need them all!