Europe, the Very, Very Long Way

It takes four hours to fly the 3,500 miles from England to Istanbul. It took me 247 days to walk.

Photo by Cerise Bustarret

It is hard to say where the idea began. Maybe it was walking the cliffs of Cornwall as a child, or a month's hike in Spain when I finished university. Or maybe it was being increasingly unable to ignore how inextricably climate change and aviation are linked, and still wanting to find ways to have adventures comparable to when I flew guilt-free. Whatever it was, the idea would not be shaken. I wanted to see what it would be like to travel through an increasingly frantic twenty-first century at a speed unchanged since humans had taken their first faltering steps out of the forests. Istanbul, as the city that stands between Europe from Asia, seemed as good a place as any to aim for.

Once the idea of the walk had taken hold, it took years to make it happen. I finished a university course, and then as I was on the verge of leaving I was offered a job in London that I couldn't turn down. Then I was arrested as part of a climate change protest, a conspiracy to shut d…