In March, Arjen Ulrich left his hometown of Alkmaar, the Netherlands, and headed to New York City — on foot.
"For many years I've thought about going for a long-distance walk," Ulrich, 32, says. "I'm not sure how that came to mind, but walking gives a sense of freedom, and the challenge is, to me, quite appealing.
"Two years ago, in April 2013, I flew to New York to visit a friend, go to a music festival and to generally experience the big city by drinking a hot chocolate, having lunch and stroll through downtown or Central Park," he recalls.
"On my way back in the airplane, the map of Europe and North America was shown with a projection of the route. I looked at it and saw it was (nearly) flying over the UK, Iceland, and Greenland, countries that have been at the top of my travel list for a long time. I immediately thought of doing the same trip over land, going from country to country — walking this route had, at that moment, not crossed my mind but quite soon I combined the urge of doing a long distance walk with going to New York over land," he explains.
Ulrich gave notice at his job in February, and set off only weeks later. He has documented his travels on his website, walk2nyc.com, and his Instagram, @arjenulrich.
Keep scrolling to read more about his adventure, in his own words.
"The first week of walking was terrible. I had never walked more than 10km [6.2 miles] before I made the decision of doing this trip. I did four rather easy walks of 34km [21 miles] in the last three months before I left but walking day in day out with a 15kg [33 pound] backpack wasn't easy at all."
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Day 1 Alkmaar-Haarlem: more detour animals! The beach really beat me this time. There was a lot of wind and it was a difficult walk on the fluffy sand.
"I try to keep walking to a maximum of eight hours, which equals 40km [25 miles]. However, when I see I have to do more than that (up to 50km [31 miles]) I will just wake up early and make sure I have enough energy to make it."
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Day 20 Calais-Canterbury: since it is 'Patrick van Holland-day' today I ignored Google Maps and went looking for paths through the fields and forrests between Dover and Canterbury. The walk was therefore a bit longer but also a lot more interesting! Thanks Patrick!
"Looking at the flight path of the plane flying from New York to Amsterdam I figured it would be best to at least cover the UK, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Canada and the US. I've added Belgium and France so that I could walk almost entirely to England, taking only the ferry from Calais to Dover. This first part also allowed me to get used to walking while still talking Dutch in an area that is familiar to me. In case something would terribly go wrong, I could easily take a train home."
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Goodbye Alkmaar!
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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