Do you love to travel but you feel a twinge here, maybe a pang there, and those little warnings are giving you second thoughts?
Aches and pains eventually catch up with all of us, even the most enthusiastic traveler. A new travel guide series addresses this reality head-on with advice for making travel easy and doable for the slower-moving set.
The first book in the series, Easy-Walking Europe: Tips and Suggested Tours for the (Somewhat) Mobility Impaired, was released in 2020, and the second one, Easy-Walking North Shore (Lake Superior), is now available. The book series and accompanying Web site (easywalkingtravel.com) are specifically for people who “still get around fine but can’t walk as far or as fast as they used to, and stairs can take a while.”
Series author Elizabeth Bingham has written multiple foreign language and culture books for travelers to Europe, as well as two travel memoirs. This “easy-walking” focus started for her in 2017, after her mother found herself repeatedly exhausted during a group tour the two were taking in England.
When her mom said later that she’d like to visit Scotland next, Bingham researched how to make a visit abroad less taxing and then tested her ideas with people who are no longer as fit or mobile as they used to be, including her mother. Her modified approach to travel worked wonderfully, other people wanted to know how to do it, and thus a new travel book was born.
Since COVID-19 has shut down international travel, Bingham has turned to making domestic U.S. travel easier and more enjoyable for her mother and others like her. Easy-Walking North Shore (Lake Superior) grew out of that desire and illustrates how to adapt a stay on Minnesota’s rugged North Shore of Lake Superior to make a visit less strenuous and more readily accessible to a less-mobile traveler.
Easy-Walking Travel books contain specific information about sights, tours, activities, transportation, and accommodation, as well as ongoing themes that include slowing down, taking things easy, conserving energy, and focusing on enjoyment rather than heroic efforts. Each location includes a detailed sample itinerary that follows these easy-walking guidelines.
Slower walkers can still travel enjoyably, even if they’ve left their youthful fitness far behind—they may just need to adjust their plans and expectations a little. Easy-Walking Travel guides give people the tools to do that.
Easy-Walking Europe and Easy-Walking North Shore are both available on Amazon.com.
Travel for when the heart is young but the legs no longer are….
