What would you consider a moderate length day walk or hike?

[thedogmademessagain]

I'm curious what people in general would think is a moderate/medium length day hike or walk? I'm just asking because when I told the physiotherapist what I thought a medium length day hike was, I got a funny look. Not sure if that means I was under or over estimating moderate.

and then they'd have to go straight home to cook a chicken to feed their family for the next 17 days.

Yep, we did the Thames path a while ago and some of those day sections are 20 miles or so - but very flat, as they are by the side of a river (often pretty muddy and/or flooded outside of London, but still flat).

If you are planning to walk all day, 20 miles is fine. I would call it long not moderate, but absolutely doable.

@Tigerbalmshark and @Pineforests 😂😂

You both know MN as well as I do!

Remember that a physio is going to be working with people like me, who are celebrating walking 20 meters as a huge achievement. Hearing "oh we had to cut back to only 8 miles" is going to be very out of the norm to what they deal with day to day.

I’d consider a hike as something where I had thought about needing to take some fuel, water etc and would consider what I was wearing whereas a moderate walk would be out my shoes on and walk out of the door!

This.

Your physio will be seeing people who struggle to walk 4 minutes down the road. I can confidently say any look of ‘surprise’ will be you saying you’ve dropped down to 6-8 miles due to the issue.

Short 4-6 miles (half day), moderate 8-10 miles, long 11-15+ miles

I’ve been musing on this while out with the dog. A few years ago I was horrendously unfit. The forest I am currently walking around is about 20 minutes walk from my house and I used to drive to the forest because the walk there and back plus the half an hour or so round the forest felt like too long a way to walk!

Now I always walk there and back and we often do multiple laps of the forest as well if we have time, but back then I probably would’ve felt like an hour of walking was a really long way.

It’s quite shocking looking back to realise that because now I could walk all day, but back then a 5-mile walk for example would have been very unusual and something that would have taken a lot of effort and been an achievement.

So I think for a lot of people who aren’t used to walking, an hour seems like a really long time.

I'd say about six or seven miles.

8 miles plus would take the majority of the day, so to me, that's a long walk. Two to four miles is a short walk.

It’s about timing not distance imo.

for a day hike 3-5 hours is a short hike; 5-7 hours moderate anything above 7 hours is long

Most physios I know are massively sporty themselves though, so presumably they understand that other people can walk 8 miles with no trouble?

I'm sure the physio would've spoken up if they thought much either way - if you're doing too much they'd have told you, likewise if they thought you need to push yourself a bit more. They may just have an expressive face that's hard to read!

Blackheath Ramblers is one of the hard-core branches of The Ramblers. Their walks during the summer are up to 20 miles, often "at a brisk pace". The walks are in SE England, so hilly but not mountainous.

https://www.ramblers.org.uk/go-walking/ramblers-groups/blackheath-group

Same here.

I would imagine that anyone who's seing a physio would have some level of difficulty walking 8-10 miles over a day though. Walking that distance may also not be the best thing, depending on the injury or condition - that could easily explain the look of surprise.

Depends if you use the word walk or hike for me. Ballpark
reference ….
A short walk is <3 miles, moderate is 3-6 and long > 6 .

But a short hike is < 8 moderate is 8-15 long is > 15 .

About 6 hours. Anything under 4 is a short hike, anything 8+ is a long all day hike. So 5-6hrs would be a moderate hike.

Oh well. Feeling like a failure. Again! I’m going to have to stop reading these threads. I had been feeling good about going for an hours walk most days. 😔

8 to 10 miles. A longish walk would be 14 plus for me, a short walk 6 a stroll 3 or less.

Agree with this. The hardest hike I've ever done was 8 miles but the terrain made it difficult. Coming down steep hills is a killer for the knees!

An hour a day is probably more than most people do. I've got dogs to walk (albeit getting on in age a bit now) and I don't do an hour every day.

I'm not convinced hiking is that good for you anyway, I love the mountains but my knees are getting more and more wrecked the older I get.

I'd say 20k if fairly easy terrain. Not mountains.

Shorter than that and it would be just a morning/afternoon walk. Not a day walk.

We did 27k last Saturday and that was a long walk!

3 miles is visiting a friend for a cuppa or a short dog walk (requiring another similar later in the day).

5 miles is a walk. 8-10 miles on steep terrain is a moderate walk. 15+ is long. And over 20 is generally painful. I only do that every few years though so not fit for that distance.

We used to walk 3 miles each way on a disused railway to the pub for lunch in jeans and trainers. We got a lot of filthy looks and some comments from men with beards, rucksacks and walking poles because we were clearly a mountain rescue statistics waiting to happen.