The author, shown posing on a trek through the Silvery Dolomites, said she and her husband will continue traveling to take long walks for as long as they can.
Courtesy of Louisa Rogers.
For more than 40 years, my husband Barry and I have undertaken long-distance walks throughout the world, usually coinciding with a milestone birthdayThe year I turned 30, we hiked the Muktinath trail in Nepal; at 40, the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu; at 50, the Camino de Santiago; at 60, the Coast-to-Coast across northern England; and at 70, Hadrian's Wall, near the Scottish border.Barry is now 83, and I'm 74, but we have no intention of stopping. In the last two years, we did shorter treks in the Ecuadorian Andes and the silvery-spired Italian Dolomites.We're not uber athletes, but we've found that as long as you're in reasonable health, you can always keep walking. It's true, though, that some hikes are more challenging than others. During our Machu Picchu trek, for instance, the Inca steps were so steep, I don't know how anyone could clamber up and down them. My knees are happy we did that trek when I was 40!Over the years, we've gained some hard-earned insights from our walks.Beauty can be very simpleWe've climbed to elevations of 18,000 feet in the Himalayas, and a humble 1,200 feet in the countryside near Hadrian's Wall. Yet that simple landscape, consisting of ordinary green fields, hills, and stones, took my breath away.
