Here comes the first part of our retrospective on half a year of traveling as a family and with a small child. If you want to travel safely with your child by mainly foot through the landscapes of Europe, we can gladly encourage you to actually do so since our experiences are (so far) positive. In the following posts we will also tell you about our experiences with sickness on the road, the downsides of leaving family and friends behind, the difficulties or challenges Kosma had to encounter and the benefits and challenges for us as a small family.
But now, for the question: How possible is it actually to travel long distance with a child by mainly foot? I can remember some of those doubts and worries I've had before leaving, which now I can look back on and answer based on our experiences with our daughter Kosma (now two years and five months old). Please consider while reading that this knowledge gained from our journey is not empirical and can vary from child to child and family to family and journey to journey:
- Will we really walk all the way? Will hitchhiking be possible with all our gear and without a children's seat for the car?
Answer: No, we did not walk all the way. And luckily yes, hitchhiking is possible.
A favorite quote of mine is from German book author Erich Kästner and it says: "There is two kinds of people; the ones that are consequent and the ones that live." Now, this quote can also lead into wrong directions since especially as a parent sometimes you must be consequent, but for our journey flexibility turned out to be a virtue.
We did take trains two times(for the question of how we financed this see later post):
- from Liége// Belgium to De Panne// Belgian coast, because I wanted to reach the sea on my 33rd birthday after 2 weeks of pain and resting from a tooth operation and
- from Rouen// France to Nantes// France, because our hoped for hiking trail turned out to be mainly concrete country roads and overgrown forest paths full of ticks (and I mean really! full of ticks).
At the station of Liége.
And we were given lifts a couple of times from wonderful helpful people (thank you!!), partly strangers, partly friends and family, for example
- to the station of Liége and the hospital of Aachen when I was sick with toothache at a friends' place,
- around the troubled and industrial areas of Dunkerque and Calais in France, because our former night's hosts were worried for our safety or
- from an commercial area outside the city into a beautiful part of Rouen by the mother of three children who invited us even to stay in their house and wanted to help or
- from Mimizan to Bordeaux with a wonderful wwoofer companion we've met at the farm of Benico or
- from Nantes, Bretagne to Naujac-sur-Mer, Southern France with friends of ours from Germany who had decided to spend their holidays with us and last but nor least
- from among others Naujac-Sur-Mer to Arcachon with Jonathan's family who we've also spent some beautiful weeks and numerous car drives with during our trip.
All our gear fit in the trunk, on the very top the still wet diapers of Kosma (from washing of course..)
Regarding the real hitchhiking we've used our thumbs only one time so far at the Dune du Pilat and were picked after not even an hour by a wonderful mother and her daughter.
So Kosma many times could sit in the children's seat of other children. If not, I took her on my lap and used my seat belt on her, carefully watching that the belt will not be close to her neck but only crossing her upper body.
- Will my child get enough physical movement when sitting in the children's carrier (in our case the deuter kid comfort 3) for such long hours?
Answer: Luckily nature is a big playground and even in cities playgrounds are part of the typical urban landscapes. So there is always the option to let your child experience its body by climbing, sliding, jumping, running etc. Of course this means a lot of breaks during the day and therefore shorter walking distances (we did around 12-15km per day in average).
Forest, Food and Cuddle break with Kosma. 
One of many great adventures to experience when outside and on the hiking trails.
- How many kilometers can my child walk by itself?
Answer: There exist different opinions about that among the hikers' community on the web. For an orientation I've found following rules of thumb very helpful:
1. age of the child x 1,5 = possible walking distance in km
2. normal h/km x 2 = the time you need for a distance when walking with a child
If your child is 8 years old this means then 12km of walking and if you usually walk 6km in 1,5 hours, you'll now need double the time, 3 hours, so in total 6 hours for 12km. In the case of Kosma (2 years old) she can walk about 3km per day by herself and where we before walked 18-35km per day, we now reach a distance of 10 to maximum 21km per day.
Factors like altitude difference, weather conditions and underground are not included in those formulas, so they are really only an orientation which in our case turned out to be helpful and true. - Will my child get bored quickly while walking?
Answer: I still have some small toys in our luggage for such cases (small finger puppets, two tiny children's books, balloons, soap bubbles, paper, pencils), but fact is that we barely used them. Kosma sang a lot when sitting on my or daddy's back (she even invented an own little melody, I was very impressed), we talked about our surroundings and invented games. And during the breaks discovering the area, eating and cuddling, was enough of action and input.
Small and light toys for boring hours: pencils, little books, plastic balls, "Knöchelchen". Later this changed to balloons, pencils, fingerpuppets and soap bubbles, but... 
...usually these kind of toys are not necessary. Nature itself is the biggest playground. 
- Will my back stand my child's weight and steady movements?
Answer: I'd lie if I claimed it was always a pleasure to carry around 17-20kg (11,5-13kg Kosma alone + 3,5kg deuter Kraxe + varying weight depending on the amounts if food/ diapers/ changing clothes in the Kraxe's bags). Yoga and general strengthening exercises for the back definitely help as a preparation before the planned trip and as a measure of relief during the trip. It is also constantly amazing to experience how adoptable our body is by testing the limits carefully (!) and never (!) overstraining. I remember for example how during the first days Kosma got too heavy for me when sleeping, so I always took care of taking a break then. But at some point it didn't make a difference anymore, probably also because I noticed how Kosma found her way of being very comfortable in the deuter carrier when being asleep.
Also it was of immense help to sometimes change the points of pressure and burden by switching our two carrying systems: most of the time Jonathan had the Carrix and I was carrying Kosma, but when we needed or wanted to, we took turns.
Daniela with Kosma and the Kraxe fully packed after a refreshing jump into the sea. 
Back ache prevention: Yoga on the beach at the French/ Belgian border of Bray-Dunes.
- Will Kosma have enough contact to other children?
Answer: Yes! At least as long as we were actually hiking and walking. See former blog entry From Family to Family.
Yet still as soon as we stayed at places without children for a longer time it got difficult and also it is one thing to have steady friends and friendships and another to have short-lasting play friends. More about this in a later post.
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