The time we decided to walk to Loughborough in a day:
Added 2020-04-20 09:55:08 +0000 UTCMarch 2010. Aged 19, me and my mate Dickson, spurred on by a drunken bet, decided to walk from our houses in Aldridge, to Loughborough, Leicestershire in a day. Through the fields. Kind of like the missions to Tamworth or Lichfield with Greg, except instead of being 10 miles, it was 40.
With a friend at university there who would let us stay the night, we set off into the fields at 5am in the pitch black. We passed through a sewage plant in the first light of dawn, before missioning through the Staffordshire fields past Shenstone, and Weeford where we were chased by a landowner on horseback in a posh estate, before taking a drastically wrong turn at Whittington which took us north up to Alrewas. There we studied a tourist map placard which indicated we hadn't even gone a quarter of the way, and our feet were already hurting. We admitted we probably wouldn't make it there and then, but, we cracked on, through uncharted territory to villages such as Coton in the elms (the alleged centre of england), Rosliston and beyond. At castle Gresley we gave up on the fields and rejoined the roads, where a woman in a post office gave us the worst directions I've ever received, sending us south towards Twycross Zoo. Eventually we corrected ourselves and passed through the industrial revolution heartlands of Donisthorpe and Moira, still guessing the way, before finally popping out at Ashby de la zouche. By this point our feet were in complete agony and it was gone 6pm. We stopped for a meal at whetherspoons and scoffed a bag of jelly babies each from the shop, before deciding, fuck it. Let's do it. We walked the last 12 miles in the pitch black on a weaving A road with no footpaths. Cars bombing round corners at 70mph with their full beam on, blinding us as we trudged hopelessly on what felt like razor blades. 5 hours later we arrived, only to learn that our mate (another Tom) was actually out clubbing and wouldn't be back for a while. Covered in mud and wearing tracky bottoms and boots, we slept on a park bench in Loughborough university campus until 3am. Occasionally awoken by the odd group of sniggering drunken girls. We then moved to the cold floor of Toms pokey apartment which was somehow even colder. Hardest mission I've ever done.
Image 1: the route
Image 2: the two television masts at Blake street and Tamworth at 5:30am
Image 3: the defeated figure of Dickson leaning on a road sign that signalled we still had another 7 miles to go when we thought we were basically there.
Comments
Great story
Sierra Shellabarger
2021-02-06 22:46:25 +0000 UTCThe longest/most exhausting walking I've ever done was about 25-30 miles over about an 18 hour period. Over the summer of 2019, I was working at this brewing company/restaurant in downtown Yonkers, NY as a dishwasher and utility worker. For reference, Yonkers is the city that borders the bronx to the north. I decided to walk there in the afternoon for my night shift, and it was a pretty standard 4 miles. I worked my 7 hour shift, and most of it was standing and walking around. At the end of my shift, the buses weren't running, and I really didn't want my dad to pick me up, because I knew he was going to yell at me about applying for internships or something like that, so I told him that my friends were picking me up to go to McDonald's (they were not, I lied). What I then did at about 10:30 PM then was hop on the next Hudson line train into New York City without a plan. I spent the time on the train looking for bars that I could walk into, like the stonewall inn, but nothing looked promising, and I had a backpack on, many bars prohibited backpacks. I arrived at Grand Central terminal, and, not wanting to pay $2.75 for the subway, I just walked south for 2.5 miles to Greenwich Village, stopping at Joe's Pizza (the pizzeria in Spiderman 2). After eating some pizza, I decided that I was probably spending the entire night in the city, so I found a bar that had pool tables. Being an avid billiards player, I walked a half mile to this bar called Fat Cat, which had reasonable pricing at $7/hour for a pool table. I played by myself for about an hour, until a jazz band came on, and, being 3 pints of belgian sours in, I decided that the only thing I wanted to do for the rest of the night was listen to the funkiest and smoothest jazz I'd heard in years. I met a bunch of really cool students there, and I was just alone with strangers in this dive bar at 3 AM rocking my head all around to two guys singing scat with full instrumental backup. They even performed "I Remember Clifford", a song I had seen performed by one of the original writers back in 2011 on a high school trip in D.C. Anyway, the bar closed at 4 AM, and I realized that I had to charge my phone for a bit if I was going to make it home. They kicked me out at 4:15, and I had a little bit of a dilemma in front of me. If I hopped on the subway home right then, the connecting bus service in the bronx to Yonkers would not be running until a half hour after I would arrive, so I decided to just walk north for a half hour to pass the time. Me being drunk at 4:30 AM in New York City, I thought, why the fuck should I not just walk all the way home? (home was about 25 miles away). After about 3 seconds of deliberation, I picked up my speed to my comedically determined 5+ mph pace, and headed straight up an unusually desolate 5th avenue, passing an empire state building with no tourists around, and only seeing the occasional delivery workers passing by. I entered Central Park probably around 5 AM, just when a dim twilight was starting to appear. Crime has decreased in the park drastically since the 80s, but it still felt a little sketchy, and I kept my eyes peeled for any trouble. Eventually, I got to the main loop road in Central Park where everyone exercises, and there was a number of joggers out. I was still walking really fast, and it was quite awkward when this jogger lady was jogging approximately 0.1 mph faster than me for the longest time. I exited the park on the north side, and feeling adventurous, cut through Morningside Park and the neighborhoods surrounding Columbia University. I kept my pace going along Riverside Drive with great views of the Hudson river, it was broad daylight by this point, probably 7-ish in the morning. I kept going along riverside drive without realizing that I had passed the last road I could turn off on as a pedestrian. I almost walked onto the highway that feeds onto the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey, and had to turn back, having wasted a mile or so. Anyway, after that, not a whole lot happened until I got to Broadway, around 180th st, just a mile from the northern tip of Manhattan. Along broadway, I bought a bunch of cheap fruit, a carton of blackberries for a dollar, but they weren't very good. By the time I reached the broadway bridge crossing from Manhattan to the Bronx, my 5 mph had turned into 2, and I was limping with little energy, with lots of pain in I think it was the outside of my right knee. I practically crawled into a diner (Bronx Riverdale Diner), and had a lousily small BLT sandwich with a lousily small glass of apple juice. I knew then that I was not able to make it the further 7 or so miles I'd need to walk to make it home. I walked another half mile along Van Cortlandt Park in the north bronx, and called my dad to pick me up. When my dad picked me up, he wondered why the hell I was in the bronx at 9:30 AM. I told him "Oh, my friends picked me up and I stayed the night. I thought I'd just go for a short 7 mile walk to the park to get some exercise". On the car ride home, he yelled at me quite a bit for not getting an internship for the summer. So yeah, that was very rambly, and also a few weeks after you asked, but it was 4 miles to work, about 3 miles in lower manhattan, maybe 17 miles from lower manhattan to the north bronx, and I guess we'll say I walked a couple mile's worth during my work shift, so maybe that's 26 miles, around a marathon. I was in pain for quite a while.
Devery Sheridan
2020-05-09 13:23:12 +0000 UTCThat would shit me up. That movement sounds more like a bear mate I think you got off lucky there! Although as you say they're pretty tame, but still nothing to be sniffed at! You know you gotta go back there and look for him now. haha
tom davies
2020-04-22 18:48:00 +0000 UTCMine was a solo hike gone a bit wrong. I was 10 miles into an 11 mile loop hike (starting point at my home, by the trailhead). At mile 10 I was going down a rarely-traveled section of trail down a very steep slope. I heard a large branch crack maybe 100ft away. And then another. And another. Large footsteps? Could be a deer (very common here). Or it could be a black bear (not too common, and not too dangerous, but it's still a BEAR). Never found out what it was. I decided it best to backtrack back up the steep slope for 1 mile and do a 3-mile detour to avoid the area where the bear/dear (man-bear-pig?) was. It sucked. What sucked most is I never even got to see what animal it was!
EJL
2020-04-21 06:06:17 +0000 UTCbeastly walk in that weather Nicholas. That must have been gruelling man did you purposely chose cold as fuck weather?
tom davies
2020-04-20 19:22:46 +0000 UTCJesus mate what possessed you to walk all that way? how long was the route meant to be? ..yeah they are proper English names arent they. Loughborough could be pronounced in so many friggin ways to an outsider.
tom davies
2020-04-20 19:21:19 +0000 UTCWow, that's a long way; especially if you started out missioning across fields! I think my longest day's walk was from Boston to the U.S. state of New Hampshire, about 34 miles by the time I got to the train station for the ride home. The "mission" was to walk to a different state. One complication was that it was one of the coldest days of the year, starting out at -14 C (7 F) in the morning, but I was at least on roads all day.
Nicholas Van Buer
2020-04-20 14:50:15 +0000 UTCHAHAHA. This is awesome! What I would do to relive this through film, what a belter of a mission. My most exhausting walk was probably 33km (not sure of miles) at midnight as a drunk 17 year old (how Australian of me). Not sure what time I got home, but I walked along a highway of sorts and up a hill in the wrong direction, when there was definitely an easier route, and given I was wearing vans, I couldn't feel my legs for 3 days after. I've had longer walks, but that was the most tiring mission. Side note: being an Englishman in Australia, even reading the town names in this post give me a taste of it again! ๐ Cheers Tom
Robert Jefferies
2020-04-20 10:12:37 +0000 UTCWhat's the longest / most exhausting days walk you've ever done?
tom davies
2020-04-20 09:56:57 +0000 UTC
