Long Distance Walks for the Bucket List

“Long distance walking is a brilliant hobby” said a friend recently.  In our book any walking is good, so whilst few of us have time to take off for a long walk, below is a brief round up of what is on our bucket list!

The Camino Way, Spain

The Way of St James aka The Camino Way is a long distance walk that has attracted thousands of Christian pilgrims from all over Europe and as a result there is no single route or trail. It all depends on where you start!  As the song goes “it’s not where you start, its where you finish” and this walk finishes in the city of Santiago de Compostela in north west Spain which is where the tomb of St James was claimed to have been discovered back in the year 813.  The route was declared the first European Cultural Route by the Council of Europe in October 1987 and it was also named one of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites.

It must surely rank as one of the oldest named walks in the western world. Provided you walk a minimum of 100kms of the Camino Way walkers can earn a compostela or certificate of accomplishment to prove they’ve done it!    Did you know that when you finish one of Treasure Trails’ walks and submit the right answer, you can get yourself a certificate?

California Coastal Trail

The most interesting sounding long distance trail in the US is the romantically named The Grand Enchantment Trail. It doesn’t sound like a walk for the faint-hearted as the listed hazards along the way include desert heat and sun as well as mountain snow and high-water fords! There are poisonous snakes and scorpions to watch out and primitive conditions!   730 miles across the American South West wilderness, the route starts near Phoenix and heads east to Albuquerque, New Mexico!  We won’t be tackling that any time soon, but we would be very happy to walk some of the Californian Coastal Trail. Whilst this is yet to be totally completed, the aim is to ensure that the Trail will eventually run continually from Oregon to Mexico and the principles to be adhered to in its design are it will be “within sight, sound, or at least the scent of the sea.”  We have lots of Trails within sight of the sea, and some that loop with the coastal paths, particularly the Cornwall ones!

Africa

We are not sure that Africa and long distance walking make comfortable companions, but we have been intrigued by the recent Julia Bradbury programmes on BBC entitled South Africa Walks. Somehow, we wouldn’t have expected it to make great television - watching someone walk rather than getting out there ourselves. Perhaps we can get the BBC to commission us to be filmed whilst we walk!  Some of you do film yourselves solving our clues and we love to see your videos, so keep them coming in to us.

UK

Of course we can dream about California and Africa, but we are much more likely to tackle a long distance walk in the UK.

One of our Trail Writers has written a companion to The Cotswold Way (N to S) and another has written a set of Trails all along the coast in Norfolk, one of which is 8 miles long.  So, watch this space and you may find other Treasure Trails that are longer than the more usual less than 5 miles!

Of course if you are into long distance walking, you could stitch a number of Treasure Trails together! How many Trails can you complete in a day? Or how many Trails have you completed over a 24 hour period? Answers below please or on our facebook page!