|
I do most of my walking, or "hiking" in areas that don't fit the normal definition of hiking areas. I mostly walk across cities, and the suburban/rural areas that surround them. This can grade into natural and wilderness areas, at times. I do this for two reasons. One is philosophical: I think that people make a dichotomy between "urban/inhabited" and "natural/wilderness" that can ignore that both of them are connected. Like people disappear from urban life, and reappear in a magic, unconnected place called "the wilderness". So one reason for urban hiking is to remind us that an inhabited location is a part of our environment as well. A more practical reason is that I am usually short on time and money, so that things I can do in a day are much more reasonable than finding a natural location to "go to". I'm cheap and I wake up late. When I was a teenager growing up in Portland, I would end up walking long distances, between friend's houses, along trails, sometimes just getting lost. In my 20s, I looked at a map of the entire extended Portland metropolitan area, realized that I had walked through most of it, and decided I would do the rest. So over a few years, I expanded the range that I had walked, until it covered everything from north of Vancouver, WA to south of Salem, OR, and everything from Sandy, to Forest Grove. (those terms might not mean anything to you, but its about 90 miles by 60 miles). I currently live in Santiago, Chile, and I have done the same thing here, which presents further challenges because navigating to small towns involves taking small buses and a communications barrier. Here are some tips on urban hiking: 1. Traffic is the biggest danger you will face. Ideally, you will find full sidewalks, or even trails away from traffic, but a lot of times, you have to walk by the side of roads with narrow or no shoulders. Even with the magic of google maps, its sometimes hard to tell whether a one lane road is going to be empty of traffic, or whether it will have pick-up trucks roaring by every two minutes. I usually will scout a road by bus before walking it. 2. If you are going to be walking into a suburban area with a lot of cul-de-sacs, you might end up being viewed as "suspicious". Again, even in the era of google maps and phones, its surprisingly easy to take the wrong way down a suburban street and end up walking in circles in a neighborhood with no exit. 3. Just because the hiking is relatively close to human settlement, natural hazards still apply. A three mile road between cities can still be long enough to get dehydrated, or to get rained on. Even if there are cities nearby, still pack enough gear for inclement conditions, as that applies. After taking care of these precautions, my route picking is usually guided by getting to see a variety of landscapes and community types. I usually like to see urban areas, natural areas inside of metropolitan areas, rural areas, small towns, and then the natural areas outside of that. In the Portland area, this is a pretty feasible idea. Walking between these areas shows the natural connection between the urban and natural world. There is also a matter of the price you pay for something making it more worthwhile: a small town might seem like a typical bland exurb when someone drives through it, but if they spend an hour walking there, they might enjoy it as being a unique town of its own. For the small time commitment (on a clear road with little traffic, I can do a ten mile walk in an easy afternoon), I've found exploring my environment this way has taught me a lot about how we fit into the landscape. Anyway, I know this subforum is pretty slow, but does anyone else have experience with this type of urban/suburban hiking? Does it seem like a ludicrous and pointless idea? Tell me what you think.
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2019 20:53
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 30, 2024 11:08 |
|
|
https://allpoetry.com/Walking-Around-(Original-Spanish)
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2019 07:15
|
|
|
I didn't really do it for fun, but I've walked quite a bit around Pittsburgh. Mostly to supplement the kinda horrible public transit system. I kinda like the idea of doing it for exploration. I know I've walked places that I shouldn't have walked, or that friends / family questioned why I would walk there. I've declined rides from friends who have been driving past. Now that I have a car again it's kinda fallen by the wayside.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2019 06:46
|
|
|
I walked every street and avenue in Manhattan and large portions of Chicago. It's my favorite way to learn cities. It's one of the best ways to find obscure cool stuff in big cities.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2019 05:59
|
|
|
Downtown. Shiny, grimy, do not enter, buy buy buy. Bus. Walls up, talk, don't talk, window world zoom. Last stop. Quiet, fast cars, gates, ditch. Park. Lycra, dog running, laughter, easy. Country. Hill, mansion, tamed water, industry. Dark. Storm, move fast, car stopping, stranger friend.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2019 23:16
|
|
|
I am continuing on this path by walking from Santiago to the Pacific Ocean. At least, that is my goal. It is a little over 60 km more to go, I have walked about 60 km already. I don't usually go over 15 km a day. I could do it in as little as four additional trips...
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2019 01:51
|
|
|
Curious to know how that trip went. Do you do your hiking continuously, which is to say staying overnight where you stop walking, or do you go 'back' or to another place? One aspect of urban/suburban hiking is that it can be done more easily as day trips, but I rather like the continuity of traveling and having to stay in the wilderness too. I've only rarely spent nights out in developed areas, and it's always less comfortable for me. I do like that the Bay Area Ridge Trail, since it aims to connect all its segments, has portions that are urban and suburban. Notably it goes through San Francisco on streets and doesn't try to stick to the parks. I've done about half of it all (piecemeal over years) and I try to figure out what route or roads are needed to connect the currently unconnected parts, and even hike it when feasible.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2019 16:55
|
|
|
Oooh, I thought I was the only person who was interested in urban hiking. I got into the habit because of my insomnia, actually - I started going for longer and longer walks because there's something magical about cities in the wee small hours and you might as well enjoy the night if you can't sleep through it. I've had a lingering desire for years now to walk across London west to east, following the flow of the Thames. Calling the boundary at the M25 on either side, that's a distance of about 60km as the crow flies, but ideally I'd like to follow the Thames itself which adds at least 10-20 km. So definitely a three to four day trip minimum, especially since the idea is to take it fairly easy and stop off at anything interesting I find on the way. The idea of spending up to even a week just meandering through the city with the river is really appealing. My goal is to do a continuous journey and stay at b&bs etc. so it would be mostly daytime walking (although the temptation to jump on the tube home in the evenings is probably gonna be overwhelming.) What I'd really really really love to do is walk the whole Thames from Thames Head to the North Sea but it's like 345km long so that's a bit of a commitment. small ghost fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Jun 30, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jun 30, 2020 04:18
|
|
|
Walked around town last weekend. Kinda cheating since I was on walking paths most of the time, but took some nice detours to enjoy some green spaces and gawk rich people yards.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2020 00:36
|
|
|
As a dumb old surbabnite who don't know nothing, I'm gonna ask if it's safe, so that you can all tell me that, lol, Streets of Rage isn't real. But no really, it's safe? Makes me want to do this as part of a trip at some point.
|
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2020 19:33
|
|
|
When we visit other cities for breaks, we never get public transport unless it's absolutely unavoidable. Sure you can just get bus/subway/uber from hotel to museum to nice restaurant, but walking everywhere you see all sorts of interesting stuff. When we went to Berlin, we walked something like 28 miles in two days, because we wanted to go to a few places that weren't exactly near each other - but on the way we saw all sorts of interesting stuff, stopped for drinks in places we otherwise wouldn't have passed. I imagine it's more difficult in cities that are built around driving, but in Europe it's definitely the way to do it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2020 20:38
|
|
|
Take a camera(phone) with you! When I first moved to boston I walked, like, all of it and took tons of street, architectural, and nature photos. It improved my skills massively. I've done it with iPhones and DSLRs. If I had my choice and was doing it again, I'd probably go with one of the new iPhones and maybe a small mirrorless. Get some tunes on your phone, pack an oil pen, get out there at golden hour, and you got yourself a good morning stew baby
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2020 16:16
|
|
|
I really love walking around my small town just to look at houses and dream about one day owning one. I like to imagine what they look like inside, from the structure outside. I love seeing beautiful gardens and pets in the window. It's incredibly relaxing to me. It's always cool when I find a street, alley, or cool house that I've never seen before, despite living here for almost 20 years. It's a nice little adventure. Since I'm still isolating (other than work) and have been mostly confined to my home during the day to avoid people, night walks have become a thing that I do. I put on a chill playlist -maybe some synthwave, or the Interstellar soundtrack, something with a vibe- and just wander around in the empty city smoking a cigarette. It's oddly comforting and nostalgic for when I was a younger, wilder person, who would be walking home from a party or something 10 years ago.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2020 16:45
|
|
|
I live down the road from where two railway lines used to connect (and were then abandoned after the beeching report) and we walk along the old lines, which at points are linked into the chesterfield and Worksop canal paths so you could probably even walk to Liverpool or London from here with absolute minimal car interference. if there is interest I can start taking a Good Camera with us and post points of interest like old platforms and where they had to build the M1 over a railway line and ancient wood because it was still a working line at the time. You can see from the green lines on the map where they run from poolsbrook to rother valley and then Staveley to creswell. Staveley was The Big station and one of it’s lines survived as a seperate heavy goods line and connects into the Chesterfield to Nottingham mainline. Abandoned railway lines are cool. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2020 17:17
|
|
|
learnincurve posted:I live down the road from where two railway lines used to connect (and were then abandoned after the beeching report) and we walk along the old lines, which at points are linked into the chesterfield and Worksop canal paths so you could probably even walk to Liverpool or London from here with absolute minimal car interference. Definitely take some pics, I love abandoned railways
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2020 21:55
|
|
|
There is always more to see and find as well, like today I looked over and saw there was a ridge which had been dynamite blasted which was totally overgrown, and that it was over a tunnel, so there must have been a second line running parallel to the main line but with nothing but a 40 foot drop either side. The road that it went over had been reclaimed by farm land as well, and at that point my kids were looking at me funny as I was blathering on about how this must have been how all the Roman stuff disappeared as well and isn’t this all amazing
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2020 22:09
|
|
|
glowing-fish posted:When I was a teenager growing up in Portland, I would end up walking long distances, between friend's houses, along trails, sometimes just getting lost. In my 20s, I looked at a map of the entire extended Portland metropolitan area, realized that I had walked through most of it, and decided I would do the rest. So over a few years, I expanded the range that I had walked, until it covered everything from north of Vancouver, WA to south of Salem, OR, and everything from Sandy, to Forest Grove. (those terms might not mean anything to you, but its about 90 miles by 60 miles). I once hiked 39th from Woodstock to the Hollywood Transit Center in the middle of a cold February night rolling two large suitcases behind me, because I had a red-eye plane to catch and didn't realize when bus service stopped. 2/10, would not have sex with.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2020 01:03
|
|
|
Walked 3 miles and found a gravel street/alley that felt like an alternate dimension today
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2020 01:11
|
|
|
Y’all should use a random waypoint generator for really good urbEx adventures
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2020 02:39
|
|
|
I'm curious if anyone used Randonautica and what the deal is with that app and if you found any dead bodies
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2020 02:47
|
|
|
Science WHORE posted:I'm curious if anyone used Randonautica and what the deal is with that app and if you found any dead bodies I played with it a bit just now and it keeps sending me to closed-off Native reserves and random buildings within a ten minute radius of home. Every time I signal being done it asks a bunch of questions about things like synchronicity and artifacts. This feels like an extremely elaborate SCP article come to life.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2020 03:40
|
|
|
I made effort. Now, this is actually a rather dull section of track but what made it worth doing this is that this entire stretch may be converted into a HS2 maintenance line and lost to walkers so I thought I’d get all the points of interest while they still exist. This is Arkwright, built on the site of Arkwright Colliery, this line went from Staveley to Bolsover and our starting point.   Location of main passenger platform    This guy has a photo of what it looked like when in use https://www.flickr.com/photos/29644579@N07/6013713021/sizes/l/ walk to the other side of what is now a field and there is a goods platform.    So we carry on up the track past various bridges and whatnot (this is me desperately trying not to photograph near identical bits of line)    there are a few of these, I think there may have been water towers next to them and they are there so the engineer can step down.    Surprising lack of overhead bridges on this section  Until we reach our end point and the big red trucks. I hope you have enjoyed this virtual tour, any other photo posts will be somewhat less nerdy but if it’s gone in a few years then it’s nice to have a record,  
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2020 14:55
|
|
|
learnincurve posted:I made effort. Now, this is actually a rather dull section of track but what made it worth doing this is that this entire stretch may be converted into a HS2 maintenance line and lost to walkers so I thought I’d get all the points of interest while they still exist. Keep on efforting, I am round this area all the time and didn't know half this cool stuff existed.
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2020 16:45
|
|
|
 Did you know they opened up the poolsbrook to creswell line and have been doing it up for 2 years? It’s honestly the prettiest section of abandoned railway there is and only locals really know it exists at the moment. Car park is in clowne, marked by the bad arrow, left at the set of traffic lights behind dominoes pizza basically, or you can get the 77 from chesterfield and walk round from Tesco’s 
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2020 22:40
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 30, 2024 11:08 |
|
|
Fellblade posted:Keep on efforting, I am round this area all the time and didn't know half this cool stuff existed. I found another cool thing for you. Manor lodge near manor top. It’s open twice in September for tours of the lodge and then shut down till March. There is even cooler stuff in this album  Manor lodge front by learnin curve, on Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/learnincurve/albums/72157715769762556/with/50285001863/
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2020 01:04
|
|