Almost immediately after my and Mila's InterRail I was already on my way to new adventures this time in a little more natural way of moving, walking. It is already a tradition that every summer I and several friends, mostly traceurs, spend a couple of days solely walking. In my opinion this is one of the best forms of parkour, to really get from one place to the other by just using your own body. Although there aren't as many physical obstacles as we usually face in our day-to-day training, the mental obstacles are a lot more demanding. I guess that you could not call walking distances like this efficient at all, but it gives you a better understanding of your own limits and possibilities. It does also give a nice boost to your self confidence.
In the past we have usually walked from Espoo to our summer cottage, which is about 72 km in distance. The first time we walked this was four years ago. I was then still 14 so we were not so conscious neither about our bodies nor our capabilities. The result was that we walked about 50 kilometers straight ahead until we were so exhausted and in pain that we could not walk anymore. The next year we were older, stronger and most important smarter and we managed to walk the whole distance in two days. Last year we where already confident enough to try to walk the whole distance in 24h. It took us 22h and really sore legs but we made it.
This year we decided to make it a bit more harder: to walk from Turku to our summer cottage, which is around 105 km. Our goal was to walk the whole distance in three days: 35 km during the first, 40 km during the second and around 30 km during the last day.
Our route was really simple: we would take route 110 from Turku and continue it for about a 100 km when we would turn to a smaller road and walk a bit under 8 km and we would be at our summer cottage. A good friend of mine, who is a scout and is not afraid to bring forth his opinions has frequently criticized us that we are completely nuts to walk such distances only on the side of a single road. It is true that from time to time it gets quite bring just walking and walking the same road, long after there isn't anything to speak about and everybody is just silently staring to the ground.
One could say that the way we begun our journey ruined the whole point of us walking, because we first took the train from Helsinki to Turku. And soon we were already on the road. The first day went really easily, because there was a road for pedestrians for the first 20 km, so we had to walk only 15 km. During the first day we were all still enthusiastic enough to speak most of the time. There wasn't even any difficulties in finding a place to sleep. Since the sky was completely cloudless I didn't find it necessary to sleep under my cagoule.
The second day I woke up frozen solid, for the night had been freezing, or at least as freezing as a night can get in the summer. A good thing was that we were all clever enough to stretch in the evening before we went to sleep, so we were quite good to start our second day of walking. During the second day, it did get really monotonous. The road was really straight, and from time to time we could still see behind us the place were we had been over an hour ago. We would walk for an hour and rest for 15 minutes and continue this cycle until we would arrive in Salo, a small city right in the middle of our route. During the last hours before Salo we all got into a meditative like state in which no one would talk. Every one just stared at the ground or into the distance and move one leg in front of the other. Luckily we arrived in Salo when the day was at its hottest, so we decided to take an extended rest and wait until it got a bit cooler.
Lady Fortuna wasn't on our side for it didn't get any cooler after lunch. The only difference was that now the sun was shining right into our necks instead of shining right into our faces, I'm not sure which one is worse. We all had our makeshift ways to get us protected but each of us where burned by the end of the day. Even Antti, who claimed that he has never been burned in his entire life did have a red area on his neck. In the evening we where able to find an even better place to sleep. This time we did build a tent so that we all would be warmer in the morning.
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| From time to time we looked like we were stolen from a post-apocalyptic desert bandit gang. |
In the morning I wasn't cold, but my legs were already getting a bit sore. But there wasn't any other option than continuing. It is quite ironical that the only time we had to turn from our road to a smaller road we turned at a wrong crossroad, causing us to walk in the dense woods for about a kilometer. After all we did manage to get to the right road, although our speed was not anymore as fast as it had been in the beginning, so it felt like there were still kilometers and kilometers ahead although we were almost at the end. Before getting to our summer cottage we had to go to the grocery store, because seven men who have all walked over 100 km are quite hungry.
Eventually we did get to our summer cottage, we were all exhausted although I had a strange feeling. It seemed like 100 km in three days didn't offer me enough challenge if we compare to last years' 72 km in one day. I wouldn't say that it was easy, but I would have something more challenging. Thus I already started to plan my next adventure, which will probably be at its earliest in the spring next year.
Although I did not feel physically challenged, I still felt that it was a good way to bring relativness to my mind. For aeons we humans have transported themselves by only using their bodies. For us living in a post-modern or post-post-modern society it is good from time to time to appreciate the things we have.
After spending three days walking a distance that one could go in an hour by car, you start strangely to appreciate the fact that we have other ways of transporting ourselves, leaving time for perhaps more important issues.
