I do think they're right that the footpaths and rights of way are underappreciated here. Whilst I would appreciate a proper right to roam, it would be more about being able to legally wild camp. In terms of actually getting to places there aren't that many interesting places that aren't already accessible.
There's barely a field around my house that isn't crossed by a footpath.
There are a loads of fantastic long walks to take on. Personally I'd recommend the south west coastal path. In particular the wilder Exmoor section, although there's barely a dull moment over the whole 1000km. There is definitely something incredibly mindful and calming about just spending time walking.
One night we camped in a really wet grassy field and had to run back and forth from the midges to get set up. By the time we were done and in the tent there were at least as many midges inside the tent as outside. It was the only time we gave up, abandoned the tent and went to find somewhere else to sleep. Otherwise we were pretty lucky! 15 or more years ago now though!
It was ridiculously bad, even worse with having a dog who brought them in the tent through no fault of her own. Love the place, but Bill Gates needs to spend his money to sort them out.
The footpaths and Ordinance Survey maps. Combining those with the fact that most of the UK can be walked by a moderately fit and healthy person is kind of special.
"And of course the many high-school students doing Duke of Edinburgh’s Award hikes, often with looks of total dejection and sadness, and certainly with much stink, but always with an impressive commitment."
Been there, done that, got the blisters. Totally worth it looking back, got me into walkin, but not sure I understood it at the time.
Why are you downvoting me for an honest question? I've seen it a bunch of times being used in a place where I would've used hiking and I'd love to hear more. People these days ...
To answer your question, no, it isn’t. It’s ‘walking’ with the ‘g’ omitted, presumably as that’s how the poster would speak in person (lots of British people, myself included, would say ‘walkin’ depending on their dialect/accent).
A hike is a long walk, but while you hike, you are walking.
Okay got it, so it's not like hiking is more in a hilly area (but I would guess more probably because it's more serious) or something. I also wondered if when you use walking you wouldn't use hiking. Thanks!
I think people might've gotten worked up because they felt I was mocking you because of the missing g. I just copied how you used it though, being quite aware that it's walking ...
Two lightly toasted slices of NOT white bread, lightly apply very good mayo
1/8 lb of good smoked ham sliced very thin
1 large dill pickle sliced fairly thin
...aaannnnddd a bunch of ruffles potato chips.
Assemble a thin layer of ham, then pile the pickle slices in a second layer, add another ham layer, then pile the chips as the next layer, and add a final thin ham layer to insulate the chips from the top bread slice mayo layer
Eat quickly. Probably need two hands. Likely need to stop walking. There will be crunching noises. I'm not ashamed to admit I've been addicted for 50 years.
You've just reminded me of a German colleague who moved to the US that was asked in his first week "How are you enjoying things? What have you found surprising?" and replied with "Shopping has been difficult because I don't recognise most of the brands or products. The supermarket has like 100 different types of bread, except as best I can tell it's actually just the 1 type of bread in 100 different shapes. Also it's not bread, it's more like a cake."
I mean it's the same in the UK - there are probably 30+ different types of bread in any supermarket, but it's all the same. It has the same shape, same taste, just different bakery that makes it.
I'd say the UK is somewhere in between, with different types of white bread actually being different (e.g., baps vs rolls). My early encounters in the US were similar to my German colleague where much of the variation in bread was simply to shape (e.g., rolls vs sliced loaf) but it was ultimately the same flavour and texture. Obviously in both countries you can go looking and find a much broader array of options. It's just a stark contrast to experiences in many continental European countries where almost any store that sells bread seems to have white, sourdough, regular rye, dark rye, etc. and each variety is so vastly different in taste and texture.
Good bread is something you buy from a bakery. It's made from flour, water, salt and yeast. The stuff you get in supermarkets is full of additives to "keep it fresh" and a lot of it has added sugar.
I don't think this is generally true. It's very common for US grocery stores to have freshly baked bread, and there's always a huge variety of prepackaged sliced bread, it's not just like sugary wonder bread or something.
Certainly there are some places where your only option is a dollar store that probably won't have anything good, but I've been a lot of places in the US and I've never found this to be an issue.
The one time I visited the US the bread was alright! But I also had a PBJ made from a loaf of Texas Toast bread, and it was _by far_ the worst bread I've ever had.
Two slices of high fiber, low carb, multigrain bread. Toast if you can hold off your food-in-mouth-now need for a couple minutes.
Spread hummus on both slices. Hummus is a great butter/cheese/mayo replacement.
Sprinkle a mix of seeds (sun flower kernels, hemp, chia, flax, sesame) on one side.
Add red beet and cabbage sauerkraut, then turkey slices, to the other side.
Slap together and eat!
My personal recipe invention strategy is to constrain my experiments to high-flavor moderate calorie superfood combination bombs with construction times in the 30-60 second range. Prep: 1. Big jar of three months worth of high nutrition seeds. 2. There is no 2. This one is a staple now, but others' tastes may differ.
Urk: I’ve gone from “Chip buttie” to “chip butty”, I’m not a fan, I’ve had to correct my spelling twice, but I’m not trying to sneak my spelling corrections past anyone.
One of my favourite sandwich places in San Francisco used to occasionally do a chicken roll that had corn chips in it. That extra textural element was ssoooo good.
Lidl sells 'Batts' pickle, which is a little less sweet than Branston is, and has perhaps slightly more vinegar. I much prefer it to the 'real' Branston pickle. Tesco own-brand was the worst last time I tried it*.
* their recipe is probably: "1. Dump bag of sugar in bottle of vinegar. Veg? Haha, we don't use expensive vegetables here, every little counts you know!"
I prefer the old Pan Yan Pickle, but it went out of production more then 20 years ago. It has more fruit (apples, sultanas) and a Madras-style curry sauce. So more like a chutney than a pickle or a relish (i.e. Indian origin or influence).
I tremendously enjoy Craig Mod's writing. I like to save up a few dozen of his newsletters and then spend a couple of hours reading them back-to-back, especially his huge walks in Japan. I find it very transportive, like I'm there with him despite having never been. I'm from the UK though, so this is also very cool!
In Larry Niven's 'Ringworld' the explorers are always eating 'hand meals': for the longest time I resisted the obvious interpretation and imagined some unfathomable futuristic repast, but let's be honest - they're sandwiches aren't they.
Could also be a pasty! A British meal of basically <whatever you want> (typically meal and vegetables) wrapped in pastry, supposedly created so farm workers didn’t lose half their sandwiches when eating it.
For us the shorthand term was always 'The Lakes'. I never really heard anyone use the term Lakeland, though there is a South Lakeland District Council so maybe some people do.
It's quite normal to stay in pubs and B&Bs doing the Coast to Coast - that's how my wife and I did it for our honeymoon. Wild camping is not lawful on any(?) part of the route, and organised camp sites are relatively scarce for most of it.
Plus it's a pretty unusual through hike. It goes through three national parks, but it's nowhere wilderness and you're never more than about 10 route miles from a village. Resupply en route is fairly trivial.
Yeah, globally. Most long distance hikes seem to be a few hundred miles of mostly majestic wilderness, while the C2C is an unusually lovely and varied walk strung together from local footpaths...
It's a small and densely populated country. Twice the population of Canada over a fourtieth of the area. Scotland has a places a bit more like 'majestic wilderness', so that goes even more so for England.
If you want a pub walk though, no better place in the world!
There's barely a field around my house that isn't crossed by a footpath.
There are a loads of fantastic long walks to take on. Personally I'd recommend the south west coastal path. In particular the wilder Exmoor section, although there's barely a dull moment over the whole 1000km. There is definitely something incredibly mindful and calming about just spending time walking.