Summary and practical info

Kilometres walked: have no idea. They depended on the weather, terrain and the sites I visited. The least I have done was about 8 kilometres - after visiting Boumont Hammel, since I spend a lot of time there. The most was about 26 kilometres (when the sites were little or none, the weather was not too hot). I count that the average was about 15 - 17 km/day, so overall for the whole trip was about 630 km and for the front was about 500 - 550 km (so yes, I sadly didn't manage to walk across the whole front, but I will try to fix this next year, if I will have the possibility)

Duration: I was away from home 6 weeks exactly, but the trip across the front lasted 5 weeks and 1 day (started on Sunday evening and finished on Monday evening).

Sleep: tent. Mostly next to cemeteries, monuments. Also slept in peoples' yards (when they let me do it), next to churches, schools, in parks, and in XIX century built semi-cave for travellers to sleep, in a shell-hole). I encountered some rain. After encountering a heavy rain in Vermandovillers next to, probably, the second biggest German cemetery, I tried to sleep under a roof if there was a possibility of a rain. Notice: all places, except camping sites, are illegal and I definitely don't encourage anyone to sleep next to any of the places I slept.

Legs:

            Feet: after first days, my big toes lost some of the sensation (which still haven't returned). The edges of the feet were swollen and my right feet got some painful bruising all the way from the top of the big toe to the instep. At some point, one of my fingers had 4 blisters (3 of them in the same spot). But other than that, they were ok. Advice: take your feet out of your boots at least once per day when you walk (twice if the weather is really hot). Both your feet and your boots needs to catch some fresh air. And socks needs to dry too.

            Calves: occasionally after a walk-day they were hurting so badly, that I had difficulties getting into my sleeping bag. Massage did help a bit, but having a spiky ball for massage would have been better than stabbing them with my knife. If you don't have a massage spiky ball, a needle or safety-pin might do. Also, I noticed that warm-up exercises are a nice thing to do before the start of a walk - legs and knees appreciate it.

            Knees: I have something that medically have a very fancy name - lateral patelophemoral tightness and a high patella position. As my doctor explained my in "human language" - my knees does not have enough space so they rub and wear-out more. And also, they sometimes feel loose, so I used knee supports + elastic bandage to keep them more steady. This might resulted in a bit swollen calves, but kept the knees together more.

Food: I carried 10 cans of food, each of which was 250 grams (4 cans chicken filet, 4 cans chicken legs and 2 cans fish balls). I also took 4 sausages (each about 500 g). 700 g of home roasted peanuts. And 4 chocolates (fast energy). The fish balls were made out of whatever was left after separating filet (including bones and gut), so they were quite disgusting to eat (I manage to eat only half of the second can). I ate 1 can per day (2/3 of the can in the evening and the rest in the morning) and later it was 0.5 sausage per day (with the same eating proportions). I picked some wood sorrel, plums and blackberries (they were completely green when I started my trip, but there were some nice and juicy in Belgium and Artois regions) where I could find them later. I also ate raw potatoes when I found some of them left on the potato field. Due to my very loud conscience, taking corns or anything else that was growing in the fields was not an option (I would make a bad politician :) ). I also brought some bread few times and yogurts (never in my life have I eaten that many yogurts).

Water: I learned one sentence in French and it was how to ask for water. I took my water from fountains (not an option further in France from Swiss boarder), people and also from cemeteries (most civil cemeteries have water-taps). I didn't have to use activated carbon pills for water cleaning (another reason for that - I didn't encountered a lot of water resources). I also drank some water from fish pond (the water was warmed to about 70^oC and later filtered through nylon bag two times) and a small river.

Dead weight: I definitely took too many things. My "big brother" (or big backpack) at the start weighted about 23 kg + 7/8 kg "little brother" + 1.5/2 kg camera. At the end of my trip "big brother weighted 17 kg + 2.5 kg "little brother" + 2 kg camera. I used only one other shirt and one other pair of socks (on the occasions when my sport socks needed time to dry). I also used 2 additional underwear, rain gear (except rain pants). I used sweater as a pillow at first but then I just put my shorts under my head. I didn't use another pair of shoes. And, of course, the big field candle I used for my ceremony can be considered to be a dead weight. But it was a nice ceremony I wanted to do. So the backpack can be lightened a lot. Also, my big brother itself weights about 2.7 kg, so he isn't from the light-weighted category.

Washing up: Mostly toilets. Because of many nice people I met, I got few showers during my trip. I also washed up in a river. I didn't carry a towel or a sponge. I used my t-shirt or my underwear to clean myself and clean it in the process (2in1).

Navigation: I used mostly the maps I got from tourist information centres. In France I used GPS mostly for navigating small villages and calculating the distance, since French, commonly, don't like to write the distance (be it to the place-to-visit or to a town).

Mistakes: I did the worst preparation that was possible to do. I read many diaries, battle reports, analysed historical maps, but I didn't look at what is now. And in addition, I planned to use a very great, but not very navigation-usable-friendly map. Therefore I had no idea about any of the monuments and the cemeteries. The primary idea was to walk on no man's land. The problem with that is that no man's land is someone's land now. So that's impossible to do. However, due to the trenches being so wide, walking on the front line (if one considers it to be from one reserve line trench to the other reserve line) is quite easy - mostly, everywhere you step was probably some kind of war area. So this makes easier to walk on the war zone. And to realize this is quite... interesting. Also, this bad preparation resulted in me not knowing what I am going to see each day, which led to one (or more) surprise each day.

Biggest difficulty: toilets. And trashcans.

Daily routine:

            Waking up at 7 - 8 a.m.

            Putting whatever into mouth.

            Taking out the map, looking and today's walk.

            Packing (took from 30 minutes to 1 hour - depending on how I was feeling)

            Stretching

            Putting backpack and walking

            Walking

            Taking a break around 3 p.m. (taking shoes of, putting something into my stomach -> water, a piece of chocolate)

            Walking

            Picking a place and setting up the tent

            Taking out the sleeping mat, sleeping bag

            Eating

            Sleeping

            ...

I walked till around 9 p.m. (or 21.00) or until I reached my set up goal (in Belgium somehow it always was around 11 p.m. - 11.30 p.m.). My speed varied from 2km/h to 5km/h depending on the weather and mood mostly.

Losses: GPS stick, pole holder, Aisine 14-18 pin I was given at Caverne du Dragon, and trekking poles themselves (left at the airport...).

Gains: found 13 euro cents on the road. Met a lot of incredible, kind, nice and inspiring people that gave a different kind of light and meaning to all this. Started with zero friends in France, ended up having bunch of the best ones.