Share your long-distance NON-plane, NON-car travel (hike, bike, train, sail…)

[Fru-Gal]

Last month I completed my second USA Rail Pass journey. I have now ridden almost all of the US long-distance rail lines (including other long-distance travel over the past few years)!

I want to get inspired to do other long-distance travel using mass transit or human-powered methods. Since the invention of the personal automobile and the advent of discount airlines, we’ve forgotten there are many other ways to get around and slow travel. These types of travel also allow us to practice minimalism, essentialism and improvisation rather than follow rigid routes, visit typical destinations, and bring a lot of crap with us.*

So many great folks on this forum have done this type of thing.

@JoshuaSpodek (not currently active) opened my mind to the destructive nature of air travel.

@kenmoremmm has biked around the world.

@NinetyFour has hiked the Colorado Trail among many other epic hikes.

In my own travels I’ve discovered the many luxury bus systems around the US and Mexico.

I know there are some liveaboard sailors on here. And someone with an electric solar powered boat. I’m interested in sailing long distances too.

Please share!



*While I do own a rarely-driven gas car and have been a mechanic, I believe that mass transit, trains, e-bikes and micromobility, not cars, are the way forward for joyful, healthy, world-enhancing personal transport.

[Freedomin5]

PTF.

A few months ago, we took an overnight train to Beijing to visit the Great Wall, Forbidden City, and Summer Palace. We used the subway to get around the city. We took the bullet train back to Shanghai, then took the subway home.

Last year, we took the train to visit a friend in a rural village in southern China. We did take Didi (Chinese rideshare) a couple times so it wasn’t completely car-free. To get between our hotel and our friend’s farming village, her dad drove us in his motorcycle wagon.

[brooklynmoney]

I walked for 2 weeks the Le Puy camino route in France, starting in Le Puy and ending more or less in Cahors. Basically 170 miles. I plan to go back someday and finish walking to Spain at least ideally down to Pamplona.

[Fru-Gal]

Awesome! Thank you both for sharing. I was spurred to post this thread because of a comment in another where someone (will check forum name) said they’d walked across the US several times. I definitely want to hear more about that, as well as more about long-distance bike routes across/around the US.

After doing the Colorado Trail myself I learned there are a bunch of other long trails around the US besides the Pacific Crest and the Appalachian. Like there’s an Arkansas Trail. And of course the Continental Divide trail.

[2Birds1Stone]

DW and I hiked the Fisherman's Trail in Portugal ~250km two years ago and it was a lot of fun!

In the future we're considering things like relocation cruises, trains journeys and bike-packing as ways of exploring an area or getting from continent to continent.

[Omy]

I lived on a sailboat and sailed down the Intercoastal Waterway decades ago. It was great fun - and only occasionally terrifying.