Hiking/Walking Abroad
Contents
A. England
B. Scotland
C. France
D. Germany
E. Italy
View down the Thames from London Bridge
There are so many sights to see, places to visit. It's impossible to cram it all into one day. To get from place to place several options are available: the underground (tube, subway), bus, taxi, or boat. Combine any of those with walking or running and you can cover a lot of ground and have a day full of adventure. After participating in the London Monuments Half Marathon on March 24, 2019, we had four full days to explore the city and could have used more. Below is a photo-tour of those four days, beginning with our 4th day in London.
B. Scotland--Hiking Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh
Arthur's Seat
It was the 30th of March 2019 when Jane and I began our first full day in Edinburgh with a mid-morning walking tour of the old-town area. Our guide introduced us to significant buildings and statuary, while providing interesting and sometimes humorous stories and histories along the way. The tour ended at Edinburgh Castle. We took the opportunity to examine the old fortification in detail.
From the castle, one gets an excellent view of Arthur’s Seat, an 822-foot mountain located about a mile away, as the crow flies. The mountain, named after the legendary King Arthur, is also an extinct volcano, last active about 350 million years ago. However, the ravages of time have eroded away any semblance of a lava-spouting crater. And that’s good, since it makes for a moderate but scenic climb to the summit. This favorite hike of locals and tourists alike was scheduled to be our main attraction the following day.
Our intent this day was to walk the famous Royal Mile from the castle to the queen’s residence at Holyrood Palace. There we’d tour the palace and the ruins of its adjacent Holyrood Abbey. That was the plan. Nevertheless, on arriving at the palace, we were told that Holyrood was not accepting any more visitors that day. But since it was only 3:30PM, we decided to visit the nearby park—home of Arthur’s Seat. The hike to the summit was about a mile each way—and since we were already here—let the hike begin!
After just coming off a half marathon and five days of hiking around London, this hike seemed anything but moderate. One mile of near-continuous uphill walking can wear a person down. But the views along the way and at the top were more than worth it.
The following are some photos of the excursion:
Edinburgh Castle. The rain encountered earlier in the morning has subsided
JB at the main gate of Edinburgh Castle
C. France -- Normandy
French town of Arromanches-site of the Mulberry artifical harbor installed by the allies
Many of the large concrete harbor segments , dubbed Mulberries by Churchill, still remain off the beaches of Arromanches. They were simply to large to remove.
The Town of Arromanches is a great starting point for exploring the WWII D-Day invasion areas. There are beaches to walk and trails leading to the remains Nazi fortifications. These are excellent for hiking or running. Pause along the way for photos and investigation of the ruins. A short car ride to the west will take you to the American Omaha and Utah Beaches, to the cliffside redoubt at Pointe du Hoc, and to the recently unearthed Nazi defensive complex at Grandcamp Maisy. Head to the east for the British and Canadian landings at the Gold, Juno and Sword Beaches.
Arromanches
A Mulberry close enough to walk out to at low tide
D. Germany -- Berlin
On Sunday afternoon September 25, 2005, after completing the Berlin Marathon we began a tour of the city that would include that afternoon, plus an additional two full days. We had a 5-day commuter pass that would allow travel via trolley, bus and subway, but most of our excursions involved considerable walking.
This was our first visit to Berlin and we were impressed with hospitality of its people and the abundance of attractions to experience. We had arrived in Berlin two days before the marathon and took an open-top sightseeing bus tour of the city. This provided a good impression of the layout of the city and ideas for what we might visit later. It had only been 15 years since East and West Berlin were reunited into one city. Construction cranes were everywhere on the skyline, but mostly in the East.
The wall had come down; however, the difference between the two sections of the city remained starkly evident. Neighborhoods and buildings in the eastern section were drab and utilitarian. Nevertheless, tourists flocked to the area and much construction was underway to make the reunited city the beautiful metropolis it is today.
The following photo gallery provides snapshots of some of our exploits during that 2 1/2 days of exploration.
E. Italy--Rome
This excursion through Rome encompassed two full days of sightseeing in this, the Eternal City. We had arrived in Rome from San Francisco on Friday, April 8, 2016 via an overnight in Paris and a stopover in Frankfurt, Germany. The main purpose of this trip was to participate in the Rome Marathon, held on Sunday, April 10. In keeping with my strategy of destination marathons, I had scheduled time after the 26-mile event to get to know the area.
We had an ideal spot for our stay in Rome--a bed and breakfast apartment in a multistory building directly across the street from the Coliseum! It was the perfect venue for the start of the marathon and for sightseeing excursions afterwards. Although we used the Metro (subway) a couple of times, our primary mode of travel was on foot. We’d select primary destinations for the day and then set off to see what else would be encountered along the way. We were never disappointed.