I’m going to be taking 7 months off work next year to travel and hike in America by myself so taking a solo trip beforehand has been on my mind to do. I’m naturally a very social creature and am not particularly a fan of my own company which means I’ve never really done any solo travelling. If I’m going to be more or less by myself for 7 months I need to build up to it. Given that I’m planning on doing a fair bit of walking next year it makes sense to go do some walking here as my solo trip.
I’m planning on going to do Hadrian's wall at the end of summer and I’ve been chipping away at the London LOOP. They’re only a couple of some of the long distance footpaths in the UK so I had a look at the National Trails website to check out others.
There’s quite a few that are near-ish to London so one of those seems like the best idea. I had a read up on a few and have decided that the South Downs Way seems like the best option. I can start in Winchester (which isn’t too horribly expensive to get to on the train - a factor that ruled out some of the more northerly routes) and over the course of a few (well maybe 5 or 6) weekends work my way through it and finish at Eastbourne. Finishing at the sea sounds like a nice end to a long journey.
For the first section I’m thinking about using one of the bank holiday weekends coming up and doing from Winchester to Queen Elizabeth Country Park which would be 23 miles. The first night I could go ~8.5 miles to Holden Farm Camping (only £10 if you’re doing the South Downs Way!). I was originally looking at The Milburys at Beauworth which is right on the trail and I wouldn’t have to camp but it seems to just be a pub now and I was slightly put off by the statuses on their Facebook page like this :/ :/
Not the most horrendous thing ever written but I don’t think I’d want to stay with people who think that’s a good idea to post on their official website/social media.
Second night I might be able to go another ~9 miles to Meon Springs it’s listed as having camping options but the website looks like it’s all gone a bit glamping now and doesn’t have any info about regular camping anymore. It doesn’t look like there’s a lot of other accommodation options in that stretch unless I stay at a B&B which would be £100, so pretty steep. Maybe I’ll check out if there any any AirBnB’s around. That would leave me with ~5.5 miles to do on the final day and then time to travel back home which looks like it could be very complicated. Google Maps is saying it’d be about 6 ½ hours on 3 buses, a train and then the underground. Apparently it would only take 4 minutes longer to cycle back! I might need to find a different end point or add an extra day and go further on to a better place to leave from.
That’s about as much research as I have head space to do today but it all looks very doable. I’ll just wait a bit till it gets warmer and I have a better idea of what’s going on in my calendar around that time and pick a weekend to go.
Plan a solo vacation day… 9/10, I’m looking forward to it.