Snapshots: Hiking the Rota Vicentina, Southwest Portugal

The Rota Vicentina is a 450 km trail system in southwest Portugal. It includes the Fishermen's Trail along the rugged Atlantic coastline, the Historical Way that heads inland through rolling countryside, and loop trails that connect both worlds.

The system is good for point-to-point hiking where we moved to a different place each day, and hub-and-spoke hiking where we stayed in one place for a couple days.

The Emptiness of Social Media

Our explorations of Lisbon were enhanced by @RickSteves informative audio tour:https://t.co/f6SyieFh5v pic.twitter.com/1GjFxoVyV2

— Tom Wilson (@TomPhase3) March 18, 2018

In the past couple days there have been over 13,000 views of the above post in my microblog. Thirty-nine strangers have "liked" it.

Mapping My Next Travels

On a freezing February day in Minnesota, it feels good to think about upcoming travels to warmer places. Today, I've been assembling digital and print maps.

As usual, my winter trip has several phases, each with its own mapping requirements. The trip starts in the Florida Keys and culminates in a walk from one side of Britain to the other along a national trail, the Hadrian's Wall Path. This sounds grander than the reality: the path runs from coast-to-coast at Britain's narrowest point.