How would your children deal with a five mile walk?

[Laura Corin]

It was a coastal path, so lots of ups and downs. We also kept stopping to look at geological highlights, so it took several hours (including a lunch break and an ice cream). I had assumed that the boys were fairly fit - they jog for half an hour every day and do martial arts in addition - but they were pretty tired at the end of the walk. It was sunny but not hot and we had water with us. The path was rough and muddy in places.

 

Thank you

 

Laura

[MamaT]

We regularly go for hikes, and my kids do pretty well. We usually stop and rest quite a bit, though. We live in the mountains, so most of our hikes have an uphill half. Going down is always faster. Five miles is pretty long. We've only taken a hike that long a few times, but the kids seemed to handle it well if we stopped to rest often.

[brehon]

They would have a blast for most of the ramble and would start complaining the last mile or so about being "too tired". And they would be exhausted by the time we arrived home. Mine start at 7 and stairstep down to 2, so a bit younger than yours.

 

Hmmm....off to plan a 5-mile hike....:D

[Kelli in TN]

Let's see.

 

I will give you the rundown on each of my children as they were at that age.

 

Robby would have walked fast and stayed way ahead of us. Bekah would have stopped to lie down about every ten paces. But that would have been okay because her little sister, Sarah, would have put her arm around her waist and encouraged her to keep going. Gabriel would have crossed his arms and pouted every step of the way, refusing to look at anything interesting. Shalom would have started out with excitement and enthusiasm but would have faded by the the first tenth of a mile. Justice would keep up a running commentary of helpful comments like "Come ON, you expect me to walk this far? When we get home can I have a computer turn?"

 

Good thing all of my kids were not that age at the same time! We could have never gone anywhere.

 

I will never forget the time we climbed to a peak in the Smokey's. It's a paved walk up and there are a bunch of benches. Bekah had to stop and try to take a nap on every single bench. She was about 7 at the time. Sarah, who is two years younger, would stop and gently put her arms around her big sister and say "Come on Bekah, you can do it, lean on me, I'll help you." It was so cute.

[abbeyej]

Mine would be tired too. And I think the mental energy of looking and exploring and talking about interesting things makes a walk like that more exhausting than it would be just to cover the distance. And that isn't a bad thing at all. It's just a different sort of tired when you're engaged mentally for that whole time than if you're just covering distance.

[Anita in NC]

Mine would not be able to handle 5 miles. I have figured out that their limit is about 3 miles on a moderate trail. That involves a lot of stopping and looking at stuff and climbing on rocks.

 

After 3 miles my 5 year old is tired, my 9 year old is complaining his feet hurt because he is flat footed and even the 12 year old is dragging.

[Friederike in Persia]

Mine would all 3 make it, even the little one. We did a similar walk last year in Bavaria (obviously no coast line, but plenty of ups and downs) and even though they were exhausted by the end, they had all kept going.

I don't quite get why they keep going (not being a true hiker myself), but they do. It must be dh's genes. Sometimes I wish I had at least some of those, too, and could finally enjoy walking instead of reading about it in a book.;)

[TraceyS/FL]

I"m pretty sure the kids would do better than me! LOL!!

[ElizabethB]

My husband sometimes calls the walk home uphill from the park the "Trail of Tears" and it's about half a block, so very poorly. They get lots of exercise, but not a lot of walking.

[Nan in Mass]

 

 

But we've dragged ours around islands since they were too small to walk. My children were small, so at the whiny stage we just gave them a piggyback ride for a few minutes. I think Abbey is right and it was the museum-ness of the walk not the hike-ness. When we go to a museum, we need frequent breaks for tea and graham crackers. It is easier to keep walking than to keep stopping. Mine are also very used to being stuck. They are frequently in situations where they can't quit but have to keep going, so they are pretty used to the idea that complaining doesn't help. If yours aren't used to being stuck, then some of the problem might have been that they were upset about the thought that if they really can't be too tired to continue or got sick or something. Children often don't realize how much of life consists of resting a little and then keeping on going. They don't really believe that a rest will work. Yours might have been bored, too, when it was time to just keep walking and go back to the car. Being bored is very fatiguing for some reason, especially to children. I wouldn't judge either their fitness or their ability to hike from that particular walk. : )

 

-Nan

 

[Kim in Appalachia]

My 2 oldest could handle it without a problem. My ds9 would whine most of the way. He would be tired at the end. My ds7 would probably be fine (this child seems to have endless energy!). My ds4 would not be able to do it. My 4 oldest all swim, so they are in decent shape. But walking is not swimming.:001_smile:

 

Your walk sounds like it was nice.

[Heather in Neverland]

My 5yo would run the whole way.

 

My 10yo would whine the whole way.

[elise1mds]

No way could my dd do it, but then, she's only 4! No way could my son do five miles with mud, rocks, etc. It would have to be on a flat surface. That said, he did a mile walk in just under 20 minutes a few weeks ago... we were visiting my grandmother and he wanted to walk to church.

[Jenny in Atl]

We have done a few 5+ mile hikes. We just took lots of breaks. Mostly we do about mile hike up to a climbing area, watch dh climb for a few hours, and then do the mile hike back out. :lol:

[Kanga]

I think there is a difference between fitness and endurance. When my dc were your kids age they were fit, but had limited endurance. We found this out when we took them on a trip for a week of hiking in the Eastern Sierra's. We took day trips to see Tufa Towers, Devil's Post Pile, fault lines, crystal clear lakes, and tour dead volcano's. We also fished, swam, rode horses, and went boating, cooked out, and saw bears. But for years afterwards, my dc described that vacation as the "trip where we walked for miles looking at rocks in the HHS" (short for hot, hot sun - and it was sunny, but not hot!).

[Tani]

of complaints, but mostly, once we get going, we keep going. We have been hiking and backpacking since before they could walk. They are 9 and 12 now. Last summer we did 9.5 miles in Yosemite Park on one of our hikes. We did the Mist trail, which was straight up, and came down the John Muir. We were sorta trying to get to Half Dome, but it was too much for all of us. We just didn't get an early enough start.

Kids can go further than we realize, even when they whine alot. Sounds like your kids did just fine :001_smile: Hiking is such a great family activity. Here where we live, we get tired of a normal school day and will take off out our front door and go for hours. We live on the edge of the Cherokee National Forest so we have lots of places to explore.

It sounds like you had a great place to hike and a good day.

[TwinMominTX]

My twins would be wondering where their horses were? We regularly ride 15 miles, but my twins would be TIRED after a 5 mile walk.