10 miles doesn't seem that far anymore
Nov. 21st, 2010 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torkellSo, I decided to go out for a nice afternoon/evening stroll today, heading to Portchester and back via a rather roundabout route (up on to Portsdown Hill, come back down past Portchester fire station and the castle, then head along the coast for a bit before bypassing Cams Hall and following the main road back).
According to the GPS trip calculator, that was a total of 8.16 miles.
Actually, before going on the stroll I headed into town to do a bit of shopping which probably adds a couple of miles, so call it 10 miles walked today.
The strange thing is, I don't think of 10 miles as being a particularly long walk anymore.
Not long after I moved here I went for a nighttime stroll that ended up being much longer than expected, and I thought that was a long walk. Earlier this year I did the Titchfield 10k geocaching circular (about 6 miles), which combined with walking home afterwards due to bus times worked out as being 9 miles, and I thought that too was a long walk. So what's changed?
I think the real turning point was recently when after work I took the bug to Hedge End, with the aim of picking up a book from the library and then getting the bus back home. Well, I failed in that the library didn't have the book, then failed again by completely failing to find the bus stop for the last bus home (curse you, weird one-way bus routes!). So it was time to dig out the OS Explorer map and come up with a plan B. While working that out, I suddenly realised that actually, walking all the way home (which Google Maps puts as being 9 miles) was a viable option.
In the end I walked a couple of miles to Bursledon and got the train from there, but I think that's when 9 or 10 miles changed from being "wow, that's a long walk" to "eh, it's only a few hours".
According to the GPS trip calculator, that was a total of 8.16 miles.
Actually, before going on the stroll I headed into town to do a bit of shopping which probably adds a couple of miles, so call it 10 miles walked today.
The strange thing is, I don't think of 10 miles as being a particularly long walk anymore.
Not long after I moved here I went for a nighttime stroll that ended up being much longer than expected, and I thought that was a long walk. Earlier this year I did the Titchfield 10k geocaching circular (about 6 miles), which combined with walking home afterwards due to bus times worked out as being 9 miles, and I thought that too was a long walk. So what's changed?
I think the real turning point was recently when after work I took the bug to Hedge End, with the aim of picking up a book from the library and then getting the bus back home. Well, I failed in that the library didn't have the book, then failed again by completely failing to find the bus stop for the last bus home (curse you, weird one-way bus routes!). So it was time to dig out the OS Explorer map and come up with a plan B. While working that out, I suddenly realised that actually, walking all the way home (which Google Maps puts as being 9 miles) was a viable option.
In the end I walked a couple of miles to Bursledon and got the train from there, but I think that's when 9 or 10 miles changed from being "wow, that's a long walk" to "eh, it's only a few hours".
