458 Miles to Rivendell

 

I’m not a big Facebook guy. Maybe log in a few times a week, mainly to see what’s up among my childhood friends and extended family scattered about the US. However, I noticed that whenever I do log in, I am bombarded with three types of ads:

– Dog-related products

– Keto diet food products

– Virtual walks

Now, I can understand the first two. I’m sure I posted something at some point about my dog and about my on-again off-again love affair with keto. But these virtual walks? I don’t know.

These are promotional gimmicky things where you can virtually walk the length of Hadrian’s Wall or the Camino del Santiago or some other noted historical length. Hadrian’s Wall is the winding barrier in Northern England established by the Roman Emperor Hadrian. And the Camino is the walk Catholic pilgrims take from France to Spain, with markers along the way. That might not be a bad thing to put on the bucket list.

Anyway, I got to thinking. Now that I’m two-thirds into The Fellowship of the Ring, my fifth foray into Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings in forty years – why not do a virtual walk of that? Accompany Frodo from his comfortable home in the Shire, Bag End, all the way to Mordor and Mount Doom, a walk that takes place in the story over six months (with ample rest in Rivendell and Lorien).

Superb!

Then, after a bit of research, I found out that the journey is something of the order of 1,800 miles. At my leisurely pace of 1.5 miles a day, that’d take me over three years. Ugh. These hobbits can walk, man.

So then I decided to shorten my trek with Frodo. How about only to Rivendell? How far is that?

Turns out, per the title of this post, it’s 458 miles.

Up here in northern New Jersey we’ve had a very cold and snowy January and February, particular last month. So my 2021 mileage has been a mere 10.5 miles. That puts me still firmly within the bounds of the Shire. But now that the thaw seems to be leaving, and if I can average 10 miles a week (that’s my route, slightly increased, five times weekly), I can get to Rivendell in 44 weeks, or sometime the middle of next January. If I up my daily walk to 2.5 miles, five times a week (doable for these old bones), I can reach Rivendell by Thanksgiving.

I texted out to the family my desire to walk to Rivendell.

To which my oldest daughter replied with a nerd emoji.

Sigh.

But at least it gets me out walking in the sunshine!

 

N.B. One of the most interesting references for the devout Tolkien fan is The Atlas of Middle-earth, by Karen Wynn Fonstad. I bought it about a decade ago and was astounded by the degree of detail found within its pages – distances, geography, elevations, it is a legitimate atlas of a wonderful, though imaginary, world. Once I’m through with this re-reading of Tolkien (probably by mid-April) I plan on taking a walk through the atlas again.