Journeys on Foot
Walking is the slowest way to cross a country, and that is its point. At four or five kilometres an hour a landscape changes by inches: the ground underfoot, the crops in the fields, the stone of the villages. You arrive tired enough to notice where you are.
The walks gathered here are long routes with a line and a history, walked over days or weeks. Each page sets out the route, what it asks of you and what the walking is like, and the pilgrim roads add what they built and what walkers say they did to them.
Each journey says plainly how we know it. A walk marked Walked by us is one we have made ourselves, and we write about it in the first person. A walk marked Researched is one we have not walked: it is built from official and published sources and from walkers’ own accounts, attributed to them.
Find a journey on foot by country
Seven walks so far: two each in Japan and New Zealand, and one each in Australia, South Korea and Spain. More will follow here as they are written.
Australia
Six days across the Tasmanian high country, from Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair, on the walk Tasmania’s parks service calls Australia’s premier alpine walk.
Planning a wider trip? Visiting Australia covers the country, its regions and how to get around.
Japan
Two days through the Kii mountains on the Kumano Kodo, the pilgrim road to the grand shrines of Kumano and part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and two or three days from Kamikochi into the Karasawa cirque, under the Hotaka peaks of the Northern Alps.
The Kumano Kodo
Takijiri-oji to Kumano Hongu Taisha on the Nakahechi: the two unequal days, the inns to book, the buses that shorten the passes, why Kumano drew pilgrims, and what walkers say the road did to them.
Read the journey →
ResearchedKamikochi to Karasawa
Up the Azusa valley and into a glacial cirque under the Hotaka peaks: the easy valley and the stony climb, the huts to book, the season, and why the summits are a different walk.
Read the journey →
Planning a wider trip? Visiting Japan covers the country, its regions and how to get around, and our guide to Japan’s temples and shrines explains the sacred places on the way.
New Zealand
Four days through Fiordland, on the walk a 1908 headline called the finest in the world, and a day from Queenstown’s streets to an open mountain saddle.
The Milford Track
One way up the Clinton valley, over the pass and down to Milford Sound: the huts, the booking day that decides your walk, and what to do when it rains.
Read the journey →
ResearchedThe Ben Lomond Saddle
From the town up the Tiki Trail and over open tussock to the saddle at 1,326 m: the climb, the gondola shortcut and the mountain weather.
Read the journey →
Planning a wider trip? Visiting New Zealand covers the country, its regions and how to get around.
South Korea
Five days on foot along the south coast of Jeju, on the Olle Trail: an island-wide network of footpaths that began with one woman’s walk on the Camino.
Planning a wider trip? Visiting South Korea covers the country, and our guide to Jeju Island covers the island the trail circles.
Spain
A pilgrim road walked for nine centuries, and still the most walked of the routes to Santiago.
Planning a wider trip? Visiting Spain covers the country, its cities and how to get around.
A final word on walking a long way
A long walk gives you very little of a country, and all of it closely: one line across it, a month of weather, and the people you meet at the speed of your feet.
Andrew + Margaret
- All our journeys, by how you travel Journeys
- Cycling journeys Journeys
- Road trips Journeys
- Kindred Spirits: the writers who taught us to travel slowly Culture