Today we’d like to share the experiences of Dave Horwood, who walked 83 miles from Winchester to Bath in September this year in support of Dorothy House Hospice; a hospice that provides care to people nearing the end of their life and bereavement support to family and carers.
Dave has been totally blind since early childhood, and was keen to undertake this challenge solo, using key tools to plan and navigate the route, including the national cycle routes 23 and 24, as well as other footpaths and quiet roads. When asked about particularly useful tools, Dave described how he triangulated information from cycle.travel, Google Maps, Microsoft Soundscape, a set of Braille instructions and long cane.
Cycle.Travel is a mapping tool that can help identify signposted routes, minor roads, and traffic-free trails when planning a route, assessing surface quality, access restrictions and junction layouts to make route suggestions.
Soundscape is an app that provides information about one’s surroundings while on the go. Users can set up an audio beacon to their next destination, and Soundscape will share 3D audio cues to call out roads and intersections and point out relevant landmarks while in situ. In this way, it helps build a mental map of an environment to inform personal route choices along the way.
Thinking about some of the walk highlights, Dave described moments of peaceful bird song and the warmth of the sun, alongside the thrill of navigating the route independently. Becoming more familiar with the directional descriptions of Soundscape and Google Maps as the walk progressed, Dave explained the buzz of figuring out more complicated stretches, as well as the relaxation of wandering along straighter lines with a bank on one side and a river on the other!
Until Dave was in his late teens, he would learn walking routes by asking someone to accompany him to walk the route in full. Useful landmarks had to be noted along the route and regularly updated, for example surface changes, feeling the air become cooler in shaded areas, any changes to ambient sounds or echoes, counting steps to the next turning etc.
Although GPS options were available by the mid-2000s, the systems were still very expensive and included very few useful points of reference on the maps, so Dave would still record many points along a route whilst being guided by his friends and family. Sometimes Dave would get frustrated about this lack of spontaneity, choosing to just leave the house and hope for the best. Figuring out somewhere new gave him a huge buzz, similar to that of this 83mile 'walk back west', except he now feels a lot more secure with the new technology available.
Through the walk, Dave raised over £2100 for the Dorothy House Hospice and is already thinking about his next big walk challenge!
