My eight year old (A) dragged my daughter and I on a 2.5 mile walk (one way) for an ice cream. My husband had the car to bring the other son © to practice and A really wanted that ice cream. We then walked 1 mile to the community center and got a ride home with hubby. I could have walked all the way home, but I wasn’t carrying the A the whole way.
I love to walk in cool weather, so I’ll walk miles and miles just for pleasure. For example, I’ve walked all over Manhattan on two different occasions–no cabs, just lots of walking, just to sight-see. Once from Brooklyn, via the Brookyn Bridge, all over lower Manhattan, and once from Port Authority all over the central portion.
So to get something I want? I imagine it wouldn’t be too much to consider walking 5 miles, anyway (assuming the same walk back, and assuming I didn’t have to carry anything heavier than my camera case.)
I walked up to the summit of Mount Ruapehu in ski boots and carrying skis just so I could ski down again.
Total elevation change was from 2300m (top of Whakapapa skifield) to 2800m (summit peak) but it was quite a hike.
And a fairly quick ski down with no real challenges. But worth it.
Si
There’s not really any upper limit except as imposed by time, geography, accessibility or practicality - if I had sufficient motive to walk a great distance, I’d keep walking until it was done. Furthest I think I’ve ever walked in one go without any break was about 20 miles (missed the last train home, so I walked from eleven at night - arriving home as the sun came up).
But we do regular walks in the countryside of five miles or more. Last weekend, we (me, the missus and the two kids - aged 9 and 12) walked nearly 8 miles on a circular route near the mouth of the river Test. Although most of the reason for that long distance was our failed optimism about finding a short cut back to the starting point.
Baby Boomers are the laziest fuckers ever because instead of going out and doing something, all they do is whine about how all the kids today aren’t as great as they are. 
As for me, I’ve never had to work for something I really wanted. But if I really wanted it, I would walk.
And here I thought my walking from the Ferry Docks in Toronto to Islington would set some sort of record. (It was about 14 km and 4.5 hours.) I’s managed to spend my subway fare; it was the night before payday; I was downtown and all I had on me were some Mississauga bus tickets. I had to walk to Islington subway station so that I could catch a Mississauga bus the rest of the way home. Man, my feet hurt…
There is a store ten minutes away from my house that makes really good bagels with lox and cream cheese. I never feel like walking there. Instead I go to the store about one minute away (right around the corner) that doesn’t even make sandwiches with lox and cream cheese.
I usually just get a turkey sandwich.
This thread is making me acknowledge a fundamental disconnect in my attitude towards walking.
I walk everyday, usually around 3 miles. Take the dogs, amble around, work out the kinks. I think the furthest (farthest?) I’ve gone is about 8 miles, and I was pretty freaking tired by the time I got home. But the thing is, I can’t think of anything I’d walk 3 miles to get. I walk to walk. I’m guessing as far as I’d walk to actually fetch something would be probably about a mile. I think that’s about how far it is to the closest pizza place and I walk that pretty often. Beyond that, I’m taking the car.
I have walked about 15 miles in one day twice. The first time was when I was in my mid-twenties and I was really bored on Sunday. I decided to walk out to the golf course where my husband was golfing. I made it out there, but I was really glad to get a ride home.
The second time was when I was in LA for a conference about 10 years ago. I thought I’d do a little sight-seeing, and caught a conference bus out to Beverly Hills. I made my way to Hollywood, then very stupidly decided that my downtown hotel couldn’t be that far away; after all, it was only about an inch or so on the little map I had! I ended up making it back downtown around dusk, exhausted and extremely relieved to be back in my nice, safe hotel. I vowed never again to venture out without a backup transportation plan in the future!
If pressed, I’m sure I could do it again, but there had better be something pretty tempting at the end of the walk for me to go that far these days.
Back in the day I clocked some of my walking sprints at 7.5 km per hour, walking an actual hour at that speed. Walking twice that distance at one go didn’t feel anywhere but in my calves, which were fine after a half-hour rest with the feet elevated. The 35 km spurts would take a full night’s sleep and plenty of food to recover from. Looking back, I’m amazed at what I was capable of (never participated in organized sport of any kind, the full-blown geek that I was). Now a three km trip at full speed hurts in all sorts of ways (I’m also 30 lbs. heavier).
About two and a half years ago, my wife and I, along with our 1-year-old daughter, went on a walking holiday in Portugal. The format was: our guide would drive us out into the wilderness, drop us off somewhere with food and directions to our next hotel, and drive away. There we’d be, alone with our packs and our baby in a carrier and a piece of paper with stuff like “Go 100 yards up the hill and turn left at the big tree.”
So, what I really wanted was not to be lost and hungry in the wilds of Portugal while lugging around a 1-year-old. And wouldn’t you know it, I was willing to walk about 10 miles a day for that! 
I’ve done three marathons for no good reason other than to just do them. If there were actually a carrot at the other end - a reason to be walking - I suspect I could walk up to 45-50 miles. The longest distance I’ve gone on foot has been just shy of 30 miles: 1.5 miles to the marathon start site; 26.2 miles to run the marathon; 1.5 miles back to the hotel.
I’d probably need some lead time, though - I’m not in as good a shape as I was when I did the marathons.
Thanks for all the inspiring stories. This thread makes me feel better about my fellow man.
The weather is lovely and you’re all by yourself. Your car is unavailable, and a pawn shop just called to tell you somebody sold them a valuable item that has a sticker on it indicating it belonged to your beloved grandparent, and would you like to come pick it up today or should they just sell it to the guy who wants to buy it tomorrow.
I want to lose about 20 pounds. One several things I do is to try to walk up 30 flights of stairs each day at work. I started back on March 5th. The spreadsheet that I keep shows 1810 flights. If I counted correctly that amounts to 190,050 steps.
Weirdly, I don’t think I’ve ever had to walk more than 2 miles to get anywhere important. I might have walked 3 miles that day I got lost in Bellingham with a friend, though I have no idea of our route once we left the park, except that we passed the Scientology building, and can only estimate it on Google Maps.
I’d get bored before I was in too much pain to walk. I wouldn’t say no to walking 5 miles for something I wanted, but assuming a 15-minute mile and an hour-and-half limit to my attention span, anything over 5.5 miles is too far to be anything but a horrible drudge. Even if it was something I really, really wanted, I’d spend more energy trying to keep myself on-task than I would on the actual walking.
If the reward at the end was “Never have to pay for your methylphenidate and other medications” or “make teleportation cheap, easy, and available to everyone” I’d gladly walk 100 miles. But that would take a whole day, unless I ran short stretches to increase my total miles-per-hour, and I’d be bored out of my head and probably spent way too much time talking to cute animals I met on the way.
Oh! On numerous occasions, I’ve spent the entire day walking all over one or more neighbourhoods for an election campaign, most recently in Ottawa Centre for the Ontario provincials last October.
A year and a half ago a friend and I spent seven hours walking around Boston for the heck of it. Though we average a walking speed of 4mph we did make a few stops including about 1/2 for lunch, so I’d guess that we walked about 20 miles over the course of the day. I guess I could easily do it again, especially if it was something I really wanted
Are there no big churches to look at closer to where she lives?
Checks pedometer
So far this week I’ve walked between 5 and 7 miles each day, and this week is pretty typical of what I do usually. I walk a lot more now that I’m on Weight Watchers and have a steps-means-points pedometer - the further I walk, the more chocolate I can eat.
I’m also someone who will happily go for a walk for fun, when I lived in a previous house I used to walk from my place and back in a very long circuit that easily extended about 10 miles. I love walking through London and just taking in the sights, it’s such an amazing city.
Last summer (it’s winter now, southern hemisphere) I walked from the Melbourne CBD, where I was staying on holidays, to the end of the tram line at Balwyn North. Looks like about seven miles on the map. No real reason, I just like to explore, found the tram line (something of a novelty if you’re from NSW) and decided to see where it went. I caught the tram back though.
For something I really wanted? It would depend on time, I guess. I’d be willing to walk 15 or 20 miles a day for as long as it took, so long as there was no shortage of food, water or comfortable overnight accommodation. I think it would be fun.