Tough Girl Podcast Amy Aed - Travel writer and adventurer who became the first person to walk the entire Danube river.
Amy Aed is a travel writer and adventurer from Wales who was the first person to walk the entire Danube River. Amy was diagnosed with Crohn's disease at the age of 15, and the daily impact on her health was a struggle, but there’s nothing stopping her from living the life she wants. On 14th September 2022, Amy finally finished the 1770-mile journey and became the first person to walk the Danube river, more or less a year after she started. Amy is also the face behind the blog Wandering Everywhere. She enjoys writing raw, off-the-beaten-path guides to beautiful places. Amy's writing has been featured in Sick Chirpse, The New Welsh Review, Yahoo! Lifestyle, Buzz Magazine, Wanderlust Magazine, Buzzfeed, and many more. About the blog: Wandering Everywhere is a space filled with raw, off-the-beaten-track travel guides on gorgeous places, with a focus on solo female travel and travelling when there’s a million obstacles in front of you. This blog is for the travel-hungry, those who are on the constant search of the most beautiful places in the world. It’s for the people who are all about asking questions and collecting stories, sharing their passion for exploration in an outlet designed to inspire a whole community of travellers. Wandering Everywhere is a blog set out to inspire others to live a life of a travel in a way that needn’t be scary, expensive, or isolating – where wandering and wondering go hand in hand. Let’s turn the world travel-hungry.
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*This walk was started 1st September 2021 and finished 14th September 2022
Show notes
- Who is Amy
- Her early years
- Wanting to travel from a young age
- Her blog - Wandering-everywhere and how it evolved from a book blog to what it is now
- Travelling to Germany and writing about travelling
- Working with tourism boards
- Walking the length of the Danube river.
- Where the idea came from
- Doing research on the Danube and finding out that no one had walked it before
- Not doing a lot of planning and preparation
- Concerns before taking on this challenge
- Feeling excited to go and travel
- Planning to walk 40 miles a day and finish the challenge in a month
- Having to go home multiple times during the trip
- Never having done a walking trip before
- Doing about 25km on average per day
- Deciding to walk with other people
- Not being able to finish the trip before Christmas
- Having to make changes to the journey
- The challenges of walking with teammates (girlfriend - Emily and friend - Ines)
- The challenges of taking a break during the walk and going back to it
- Feeling ready to finish and end the trip
- Being diagnosed at age 15 with Crohn’s Disease.
- Changing her diet and eating while walking
- Not taking care of herself and getting ill
- Figuring out what her food triggers were
- Getting food and resupply while walking
- Money and costs of the challenge
- Receiving a small grant for £500 and a small amount of sponsorship
- The biggest lesson and learning from the challenge
- Dealing with the street dogs
- Not being able to rely on other people
- The ending of the journey and reaching the Black Sea
- The Danube Delta and not being able to walk the end and needing to take a boat
- Why the end was underwhelming and vey different from what she imagined
- Magical moments from the walk
- Deciding not to camp anymore
- Using couch surfing for the first time
- Future plans - a road trip through Eastern Europe and going to Mexico for the day of the dead celebration
- How to connect with Amy
- Final words of advice for women who want to get wandering and travelling
Social Media
Website www.wandering-everywhere.com
Instagram @wandering-everywhere
Facebook @wanderingeverywherepage
Twitter @wandrevrywhere