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Towns Along the Way
An index of some towns near trails and parks.
About Us
Vishwawalking explained
Ratings Explained
Vishwawalks
Day walks
Funky Places
Future walks
Food
Gear
Get Lost
Good reads
Links
Right to Ramble
Site map
Contact us
Towns Along the Way
An index of some towns near trails and parks.
Lucknow, India.
February, 2004
A Misty path on Mont Royal, Montreal, on a rainy day.
February 27, 2009
Cool page of the month:
December/
January
A cool page with some descriptions of different kinds of walking. So, alright, you're not into the technical stuff. Still. it's fun to read... Cool Walking.
***
Of course, no walking site is complete without a reference to Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks skit. View it here . Remember to take notes.
***
The Choking Hazard Orchestra:
Peter R. Snell's musical site (Nothing to do with walking!)
The text of Thoreau's "Walking" is such a classic that I have included the full text on this site.Check out my notes. They are ongoing, but at this point the early sections are extensive.
Credits:
One of the irritating aspects of the Internet is the unacknowledged borrowing that goes on. It's easy to find dozens of identical pieces of writing plus photos with no clear idea who did the original work.
I try to acknowledge sources and provide appropriate links. Unless clearly noted, all writing is original to this site. Please, if you use any of this material, acknowledge me (Peter R. Snell) or the credited writer if it is not me, and vishwawalking.ca. (Photos without credits were taken by me.) Many thanks.
Vishwawalking
If you take a ramble through this site, be aware that, like a walk, some parts will forever be unfinished. The site and its pages are constructed as strolls -- which means some sections are not as easy to get at as others! Scroll around a bit to get your bearings. Descriptions of specific walks can be found in the links to the left.
Happy vishwawalking! -Peter R. Snell
N.B.: Some pages look wonky on Internet Explorer, which messes with my setup. Sorry. (Looks fine on Firefox.)
Spring, 2012: The walking this spring has been fantastic as the weather warmed up unusually early. Marshy areas dried quickly (not a good thing on the big picture) which made some usually soggy walks accessible. I'm sticking to home mostly these days, conserving gas and doing intense investigations on Vanderwater Park particularly. However, Frontenac Park (my favourite southern Ontario park) north of Kingston is looking pretty good too.
I'm not in a writing/photo mood these days, so most of these chronicles are two or more years old. I trust they generally still hold. I'm ranging widely this summer, so maybe walks on other continents will inspire me to start chronicling again.
This is a booze ad, granted. But it's a good one and the company's slogan is "Keep on walking." A little nip along the trail is always a treat on a long walk.
Walkers with invisible dogs invade Brooklyn! See this YouTube. The walkers with invisible dogs event is the creation of Improv Everywhere. Check out their website for their next No Pants Day in New York and around the world, in January of each year.
It
seems one Chris Wilkinson, born in Britain, but now living in Canada,
has undertaken to walk around the coastline of England and Wales. Check
out his blog at "4 million steps."
Seems that in the early days of the walk he has been beset by rain and wind. Ah, England.
The best walking city in Canada, according to the Canadian Federation of Podiatric Medicine, is Vancouver. (By the way, the CFPM site is pretty cool if you're looking for advice on foot care. ) Second was Fredericton, followed by Nanaimo, Brantford and Peterborough. A CNW article (which looks like it's actually a CFPN news release) provides more information, including a list of the top 15 cities.
Who knew?
Okay,
this doesn't have anything to do with actually "walking walking," but
fulling or tucking in woolen clothmaking is also called "walking" or "waulking." To
walk cloth is to cleanse it and to soften it. While researching sean
nós, or "old songs" in the Irish tradition, I ran into
references to "waulking songs." While women conditioned a woolen weave
or tweed by beating it rhythmically, they would sing. Usually a soloist
took the verses while the group took up the chorus often in meaningless
("non-lexible"") vocables (la-la, ti-de-dum, etc.).
For more check out the waulking song entry in Wikipedia.
Seems that in the early days of the walk he has been beset by rain and wind. Ah, England.
The best walking city in Canada, according to the Canadian Federation of Podiatric Medicine, is Vancouver. (By the way, the CFPM site is pretty cool if you're looking for advice on foot care. ) Second was Fredericton, followed by Nanaimo, Brantford and Peterborough. A CNW article (which looks like it's actually a CFPN news release) provides more information, including a list of the top 15 cities.
Who knew?
Okay,
this doesn't have anything to do with actually "walking walking," but
fulling or tucking in woolen clothmaking is also called "walking" or "waulking." To
walk cloth is to cleanse it and to soften it. While researching sean
nós, or "old songs" in the Irish tradition, I ran into
references to "waulking songs." While women conditioned a woolen weave
or tweed by beating it rhythmically, they would sing. Usually a soloist
took the verses while the group took up the chorus often in meaningless
("non-lexible"") vocables (la-la, ti-de-dum, etc.).For more check out the waulking song entry in Wikipedia.
"Walking songs": women singing while walking or waulking cloth.
(From Wikepedia.)
(From Wikepedia.)
News
Nude Hiking
May, 2011: I can't have a front page without regular news on nude hiking. (See Interesting tales for past stories concerning hikers who get a charge out of walking in the buff in Germany and elsewhere. For places to do this and general news, check out Hiking Naked in America and Around the World. Apparently June 21, 2011, is hiking naked day. Who knew?
May, 2011: I can't have a front page without regular news on nude hiking. (See Interesting tales for past stories concerning hikers who get a charge out of walking in the buff in Germany and elsewhere. For places to do this and general news, check out Hiking Naked in America and Around the World. Apparently June 21, 2011, is hiking naked day. Who knew?
Texting and walking -- not a good idea.
2011: Here's a CBC report on texting and walking. Some U.S. states are considering a ban pon texting or listening to music while walking. Recently, after a decline, there's been an increase in deaths while walking. Some say this is because of inattentive walkers, listening to music or texting while walking. CBC filed a report from New York.
2011: Here's a CBC report on texting and walking. Some U.S. states are considering a ban pon texting or listening to music while walking. Recently, after a decline, there's been an increase in deaths while walking. Some say this is because of inattentive walkers, listening to music or texting while walking. CBC filed a report from New York.
Utopians unite! October 13, 2010: Gil Penalosa (left) spoke to a group of Belleville citizens on October 13, 2010 about creating useable biking and walking spaces in cities. He is the director of 8-80.org, a Toronto-based organization with an international outlook that promotes ways to develop liveable cities. He described amazing progress made in major cities such as New York and Copenhagen.
Perhaps with vision, we'll see the demise of the vehicle-centred city. Imagine a city with only public transit in its main thoroughfares.Penalosa and his organization show that, with imagination it's possible and far more economically feasible than some of the crazy vehicle-based projects most cities take on.
The U.S-based National Complete Streets Coalition has similar goals.
¡¡Abandoned site alert!!
March, 2010: History destroyed! I have received emails from local folks in Lakefield, Ontario, noting the demise of the Lakefield cement factory silos. I walked through the silos in the old cement factory there in May 2009. The silos are now in the process of being torn down. See my exploration of the site here in my Get Lost folder.
Many people, it seems, saw them as an eyesore. However, their acoustic properties were fantastic. I compared them to the Montreal #5 grain elevator in my description..
For the latest news, see the Lakefield Herald (thanks to writer Anita Locke for this piece, for alerting me to the wrecking and for the other links). See also: My Kawartha (Note the cutline under the picture, referring to a "wreaking" ball. Exactly.). The Peterborough Examiner also has a story and a picture of the silos being felled by the freaking wreaking ball. Shed a tear...
November 16, 2009: Time to walk faster. An article in the Post Chronicle discusses a study in which it claims older people who walk slowly will die earlier than those of the same age who walk faster.
October 26, 2009: The Human Body is Built for Distance Check out this New York Times article. It's mostly about running, but there are arguments here for walkers to ponder. I like the pitch for lower tech footwear.
Check out Inside/Outside with Kelly Marie. She's got some neat videos and maps, mostly of the Belleville/Trenton area, some health info and (okay, okay), an audio interview with me.
|
Some explanations:
The "Vishwawalks" and
"Day walks" links to the left will lead
you
to the walks I have chronicled so far.
The former are generally long-distance trails (which I break down into day walks) and the latter are parks and more contained trails. The trails listed are mostly local to central Ontario where I live. I trust this will expand with time. Some parks are more than day walks and some shorter trails can be done in a day; check them both out. The site map page has a standard
index that may help. A list of towns
near trails and parks may
also help.
"Funky places" will lead you to some great not-so-mainstream places to wander around. "Future walks" is an ongoing exercise in which I build up information on walks I have not yet taken. In this section I am presently checking out a 19th-century book by C.G. Harper, tracking his travels through England and adding more contemporary information. ***
Interesting
tales Stories
and links that have graced the front page in the past can be
found here. Cool walking sites, mechanical legs, naked
hikers, we'll keep you posted. |
World
walkers: The Goliath Expedition: Karl Bushby is in the process of walking around the world. He's having problems around the Bering Strait. Check the Goliath website for videos and descriptions. Gary "Walkingman" House "Keep on Walking, Life is Amazing, Singing Zippity Do Dah , All Day Long." — quote from House, who has completed his Australia leg walking and biking around the world. His last post seems to be made early in 2010, when he was in.from Arizona.  Captain
Robert Barclay-Allardice, 1779-1854, the Celebrated Pedestrian.
He walked one mile in each of 1,000 successive miles — a walker to be
reckoned with. Peter Radford has a book about him called The Celebrated Captain Barclay,
Headline Books Publishing, London, 2001. Check out this Guardian Review of the book.
(Photo from the Wikipedia website: Painting by Robert Adamson and David Octavius Hill in the
National Galleries of Scotland. Check out the Wikipedia links about the
artists; they're a fascinating pair.)
|
 "I
have met with
but one or two persons in the course of my life who
understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks — who had a
genius, so to speak, for sauntering,
which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the
country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going
a
la Sainte Terre,"
to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a
Sainte-Terrer,"
a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their
walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they
who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean."— Henry David Thoreau Vanderwater Park, Ontario
Photo: Carol Snell, October, 2008
|
Vishwa (or vishva) is Hindi for "world."
Hence, "worldwalking."
 Vishwawalking is both the physical act of walking and the mental act of dreaming an exotic walk. I make no apologies for the wordiness here; this is not a find-it-fast website. The planned walks I have not done outstrip the ones I have chronicled. It's a game: the virtual trips unfold until there's nothing for it but to attempt it in reality. Then, the computer gathers dust and another unfinished virtual walk waits to be vamped up with real experiences. Both virtual and real trips are always works in progress. Real walks need to be taken with a care for observation; likewise virtual walks are a meander through endless sources. They too should never be rushed. The larger dream: just as road maps connect highways and backroads, so "vishwamaps" could connect walking routes in a fantastic web across nations around the world. |
There
is also an opportunity here for those who are willing to take the road
less travelled to find attractions that are not in many
guidebooks. Vishwawalking can be undertaken by anyone with a love for walking, whether it be a quick half hour at lunch or four months on the Appalachian Trail. Its more particular meaning involves creating walking "threads," which I describe here. "We
should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of
adventure, never to return, — prepared to send back our embalmed hearts
only as relics to our desolate kingdoms."
—Thoreau Sunset, Moira River, below Vanderwater Park. November 2008 |
"The power of a country road when one is walking along it is
different from the power it has when one is flying over it by airplane.
In the same way, the power of a text when it is read is different from
the power it has when it is copied out.
"The airplane passenger sees only how the road pushes through the landscape, how it unfolds according to the same laws as the terrain surrounding it. Only he who walks the road on foot learns the power it commands, and of how, from the very scenery that for the flier is only the unfurled plain, it calls forth distances, belvederes, clearings, prospects at each of its turns like a commander deploying soldiers at a front. Only the copied text thus commands the soul to him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of daydreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command. The Chinese practice of copying books was thus an incomparable guarantee of literary culture, and the transcript a key to China's enigmas."
I am walking; it is enough.
"The airplane passenger sees only how the road pushes through the landscape, how it unfolds according to the same laws as the terrain surrounding it. Only he who walks the road on foot learns the power it commands, and of how, from the very scenery that for the flier is only the unfurled plain, it calls forth distances, belvederes, clearings, prospects at each of its turns like a commander deploying soldiers at a front. Only the copied text thus commands the soul to him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of daydreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command. The Chinese practice of copying books was thus an incomparable guarantee of literary culture, and the transcript a key to China's enigmas."
I am walking; it is enough.
What's
a site if no one views it? I
have to accept that this enterprise involves a dose of indulgence
as well as a way of recording some of my walks. My writings, like
Benjamin's copied texts are a discovery of "new aspects of [my] inner
self, ... that road cut through the interior jungle forever
closing behind it."
My site has none of the sophisticated wizardry that will propel it to the top of search engine lists.
Like my walks, I'm (generally) happy meandering the cyber backwaters. That said, if you like it, please recommend it to a friend, or link to it.
My site has none of the sophisticated wizardry that will propel it to the top of search engine lists.
Like my walks, I'm (generally) happy meandering the cyber backwaters. That said, if you like it, please recommend it to a friend, or link to it.
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Ice grass, Nesowadnehunk Stream,
Appalachian Trail, Maine.
November, 2008
November, 2008
Page
created: February 3, 2009
Updated: April 18, 2012
Updated: April 18, 2012