MRI scan of osteoarthritic knee.

Arthritis and Long-distance hiking

It wasn’t too long after I returned home from my first walk across France and Spain that I developed acute knee pain, which completely hobbled me for a couple of weeks. After a series of doctors and scans I got the diagnosis of severe osteoarthritis of the knee. One of the orthopedists said there’s basically a whole the size of a nickel through the cartilage of my right knee. Ouch, I thought.

Fortunately, it turns out that walking is one of the best therapies for arthritis. Another one is keeping as much weight off your joints as possible. So ultralight longwalking gets a green light – even if it’s not my doctor’s number one preferred, recommended adventure travel. Oh, well. Riding up long steep hills on a bicycle just isn’t my thing…

There’s a bunch of stuff about longwalking with arthritis that we’re adding as soon as we can – so join our list for updates.