Olaf & Odin journey
(hiking 3000km between France & Norway)
In 2018, I hiked more than 3000km with Olaf between the south-East of France and Norway.
A long journey that gave us lots of souvenirs of different areas : the alps (France, Switzerland and Germany), Bayern (Munichen, Ammersee lake, etc), Denmark (where I decided to stop for the summer to avoid hiking during too warm temperatures for Olaf), the west coast of Sweden and Norway until Trondheim.
Part of the Via Alpina trail between Schwangau and Garmisch (Deutschland & Austrian Bavaria)
Wild Camping at Preikestolen, Norway
Wild camping at Långaresjö lake.
Cold sleeping nights (wild camping) in Norway
We hiked more than 3200 km by foot (in average 30 kilometers a day) + 1500 km in car (Norway and Sweden) + 1000 km by train (from Bavaria to Denmark) + a few hitchhike + bus.
Saint-Paul-sur-Ubaye (France, in the Alps) until Trondheim (Norway, Sør-Trøndelag)
Weight of the backpack : 19kg to 20kg at the beginning, 17kg from Switzerland.
This journey was exceptionnal.
It would have been perfect if we could have walked the whole way from a point A to B, like you often see with backpackers in the US doing the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Crest Trail, but it is quite complicated to do in Western Europe, if not impossible. It would have demand hundreds of hours of preparation for the trip, choosing to go on trails that almost never go on roads. The journey would have been way longer and much less straightforward. It also implies a much larger budget, and package deliveries at supplying points.
With a dog, I knew that, anyway, we would have had to change plans quite often due to impossible access for a dog on some trails/roads or other classic problems when doing longer trips (finding stores to refill on food etc).
We hiked lots of roads parts when we had no choices or when we needed to go in a certain direction, to refill food for example. Mountain trails are great, but it is sometimes 5 times longer to get around a mountain than taking a small countryside road. The trails often continues on those roads so you have literally no other choices if you want to advance at a decent pace. Roads are way more painful for the joints but also exhausting when you have to deal with the constant flow of cars while having your dog on the left side in one hand, a trekking pole on the right hand to have a minimum of support for the joints and looking at every car that pass you to see if they are at a good lateral distance. While your dog is pulling.
It is small differences between roads and trails, but at the end you are double time more tired. I had a belt with an elastic leash attached to it that allowed me to feel less jerks when on the trails when Olaf was changing directions or suddenly pulling. It allowed me to have my two arms free 70% of the time which allowed me to have my two trekkings poles and so more support. But on the roads, I had no choice to have always one hand on the leash to be able to slow down Olaf if he was accelerating, especially downhill. Olaf was fortunately listening to me and had already lots of experience himself hiking along the roads.