When I first finished my masters, back in the 1990s, I had this dream of taking a sabbatical, and spending a year canoeing from Canada’s Atlantic to its Pacific coast with a stack of books to read.

This still arises as a fantasy from time to time.

Have you ever thought about an epic journey you would like to undertake? If so, where and by what means?

Not a single dream voyage?

I used to do yacht deliveries across the Atlantic to Barbuda/Antigua and Barbados (in time for the holiday season, then bring them back at the end) and also do “the Med” a lot. This during Uni and post Uni until I got a bit bored of it. Flights and food paid, but nothing for the actual delivery.. occasionally I’d get something nice but back then it was seen as a holiday delivering yachts.. mostly it is, occasionally it was quite stressful. Used to take anywhere between 4-6 weeks.. mostly in the blazing sunshine.. hard life that.
Loved it, met loads and loads of people along the way..

Would I do it again ? Well I’m thinking about it when I retire..

Tiny submarine with Raquel Welch?

I’ll bump this once, because I’m sure there are people on here who have stories to tell.

Even perchypanther.

😆

I think about this kind of thing for at least an hour every day, often more. Often it’s what gets me to sleep at night.

They often involve the North American continent. I am fascinated there by how destructive the human landscape is but how the natural landscape is in many ways still so visible. Like seeing the aftermath of a great fire or nuclear bomb or something. And the history is so short and in many cases so well documented that you can unwind it and play it forward again in your head.

I’d do the obvious travelling all over, but I’d also do journeys in time. I’d cover the continent looking for places I could pretend that I was an early explorer seeing a new continent for the first time. But I’ve also always wanted to do a forwards time journey. Pick some place that’s surrounded by nature and hang out for a year, watching the seasons change in the same place.

More along the lines of the OPs actual thread 🙂 I’d like to to corner-to-corner of Europe – Nordkapp to Cape St Vincent, on a bike of course. And if I had a boat, I’d love to sail from Cardiff to my in-laws place on the Great Lakes. I could cycle down to the bay, do an epic sea voyage then moor up and walk to their house. That would be freaking awesome to do.

I would also like to canoe through Canada, but I’d also sail through Finland, they have a huge interconnected waterway network too, along similar lines.

I am retiring in 3 years and am planning a number of sort of epic journeys.
1) a really long walk of a couple of thousand miles. Training walk will be in Scotland – cape wrath trail then off to south america for 6 months starting in Bolivia. Possibly add in a month or two in a canoe in Patagonia
2) cycle from the north sea to the black sea. Up the Rhine and down the Danube with side excursions to Transylvania and Bohemia
3) a road trip around Aus – this don’t really count as Epic tho
4) I’d like to recreate my parents trip ( with me as a small child) Mumbai to London overland but too many borders they crossed are closed now so possible a different route going north of the black sea

Yeah I fancy the Danube too, because history.

Also long walking – Pacific Crest Trail, because I seem to be drawn to North America. But probably covers the same sort of ground as the Tour Divide so maybe not. The Appalachian Trail could be good but from the short section I’ve done it might just be trees and more trees the whole way.

Personally I would not ever go to the US because of politics 😉

Even perchypanther.

All right, i’ll play your silly games. 😉

I’d like to see America. All of it.

Well, as much as is practical . I’d like to start in New England and finish in Southern California.

Stephen King to Dean Koontz

Mostly because of books and movies. We are constantly bombarded with images of the USA in our entertainment and it’s such a country of contrasts. I’d like to see as many of them as I can.

Personally I would not ever go to the US because of politics

To be honest, that’s absurd. The landscape is so much more than the current politics. Even the USA itself. There’s a lot of abhorrent history but a lot of admirable stuff too. What’s fascinating is that it’s almost all documented, because it’s so recent, so you can get a pretty good picture.

This for example is Taos Pueblo. It’s about a thousand years old, and the descendants of the people who built it still live in it.

I try to look past the USA when I go there.

On a smaller scale and closer to home a mate of mine planned and walked a backpacking route from Thurso to Mallaig (train stations but ISTR he walked to Inverie and boat to Mallaig). It’s not a recognised route and no easily found record of anything similar but something he formulated and undertook from scratch with a very lumpy second half.

scuttler – its good fun doing that. This year we walked from near ullapool to strathcarron with a couple of days in a canoe in the middle. The bible for this sort of walking is “scottish hill tracks” a guide of all the old routes. Just make up a multiday route from the tracks it describes. Also done Stromeferry to Braemar, Kyle to Mallaig, glenfinnon to mallaig, tobermory to Glenfinnan etc using the book and maps and trains

Loads for me. In order of likelihood of ever happening…

Highland trail 550 as a tourist rather then the TT

I’d love to cycle from Lands End to John o Groats on a bike I’d made myself.

Motorbiking to above the Arctic circle in Norway, and poping over to the Lofoten islands

Motorbiking round Iceland.

And buying a Royal Enfield Himalayan in India and biking back.

Slightly more adventurous would be the Great Divide, after reading an article in Singletrack I’ve been curious ever since.

If I managed to do even a few of these things I’d be happy.

4000km from the top of Oz to the bottom? That was today feels fairly epic.

On stuff that would be fun, west coast of USA to Vancouver or Alaska, maybe the length of QLD