I’m not a huge fan of YouTube videos, but this 5-episode series by Tom Davis caught my attention and kept me glued to the screen for a couple of hours. The challenge Tom selected was to cross an entire country, Wales, in a straight line. The line was carefully selected on Google Earth to minimize encounters with farmers, avoid crossing villages, and the steepest mountains. Watching the videos, I realized that, as a child, I had the same dream. I was not dreaming of crossing Wales, but of crossing the village where I grew up in a straight line.
Wales is the perfect country for these kinds of challenges: it has no major mountains and is mostly covered in pastures and forests. Also, I believe it is easy to draw a line that crosses the entire country without intersecting any major city or town.
Tom describes his adventure as “33 miles of mountains, farmland, lakes, rivers, and forests, and just the right amount of human activity and natural hazards to ensure regular doses of paranoia and pain.”