Skip to content
The Life List

Travel

Walk the Pennine Way end to end

Rain finds Cross Fell before you do, needling sideways at 893 metres, the highest point on the Pennine Way. The whole route runs 268 miles from Edale to Kirk Yetholm, sixteen days if you trust the guidebook, though almost no one does. You check the forecast each night and it lies by morning anyway. What you remember afterwards isn't the ridge or the trig point but the boots left outside the tent, soaked through, and the bog past Hadrian's Wall that took one leg to the knee and wouldn't give it back.

Practical

Cost
$800–1,600 for lodging and food
Best time
Late spring to early autumn, when moorland paths are driest and daylight is long
Difficulty
Hard
Time it takes
16–19 days walking, plus planning and recovery
What people get wrong
People underestimate how boggy and exposed the high sections are and pack for a country ramble rather than sustained moorland walking; many also fail to book accommodation ahead in the small villages along the route, which fills up fast in summer.
With
Alone

Add to your list Already done it

Also this

  • Swim the English Channel solo

    You smear yourself in lanolin and grease before dawn, not for warmth but to stop your own arms rubbing you raw over the next twelve hours.

    Best time:June to September, when Channel water is warmest

  • Wait for the train at the Slam Dunk crossing in Kamakura

    What you remember afterwards isn't the train, small and green, already leaving, but the waiting: the barrier bell, the specific hush of thirty strangers holding phones still — and behind it all, the sea doing nothing dramatic.

    Best time:Any season; clearest skies October–March, avoid the June rainy season

  • Cross Abbey Road on the white stripes like the Beatles

    A black cab slows behind you, the driver's face unreadable, while you and four strangers from Ohio try to walk in step across the white stripes without looking like you're trying.

    Best time:Any time of year, but early morning any day works best

  • Watch the sun clear the mountains from the Sun Gate above Machu Picchu

    At 5:30 in the morning the stone steps are still wet and there's no one else on the trail, just your headlamp and the sound of your own breathing at 2,700 metres.

    Best time:Dry season, May to September, for the best odds of clear skies

  • Photograph Table Mountain flat against the sky from Bloubergstrand

    From the car park at Bloubergstrand the mountain sits dead level on the horizon, as if someone had sliced the top off with a ruler.

    Best time:Autumn mornings (Apr–May) when the southeaster is calmer and cloud cover is less

More in Travel.