Adventure Travel

Tag: Ursula Martin

Long-distance walking is also wonderful for mental health

Source » Outdoors Magic

Source » Outdoors Magic

Will Renwick, Outdoors Magic »

Back in 2010, in a controlled trial for the Journal of Physical and Activity, three academics asked one group of people to walk 10,000 steps a day for 12 weeks while another group was asked to maintain their usual activity. The results that came back for the group that had been walking showed a raft of physical improvements but also indications of personal growth and psychological wellbeing.

According to the mental health charity Mind, physical activity like walking can help to improve everything from your sleep to your mood, manage stress, anxiety and intrusive thoughts, better self-esteem, and reduce the risk of depression.

So walking is good, but what about walking long distances?

“A long-distance journey makes me calmer, more grounded and more mindful,” says Ursula Martin, a prolific wanderer who has chalked up thousands of miles over the last five years, most notably walking all the way from Kiev to her home in mid Wales.

More »

Ursula Martin, a cancer survivor, returns home after a three-year-long trek through Europe

Ursula Martin (Source » Adventure Blog)

Ursula Martin (Source » Adventure Blog)

Thomas Board, Adventure Blog »

Ursula Martin has recently returned to her home country of Wales after a three-year-long trek through Europe. Her walk was a personal mission and a quest to raise awareness for ovarian cancer, which she was diagnosed with ten years ago.

Ursula found out about her diagnosis on another backpacking trip. She was due to walk back to Wales after she had finished kayaking the length of the River Danube, which passes through Germany to Romania. She made it to Bulgaria and was about to begin her walk when she received the troubling news.

Forced to return home early, her plans just got bigger. Despite her diagnosis, Ursula persisted with her passion for hiking and completed a 3,500-mile walk around her very own stomping ground of Wales.

More »

Read more about Ursula’s journey at: onewomanwalks.com

Ursula Martin has spent the last two years walking solo from Ukraine to the most westerly point of Spain. And her journey’s not finished.

Jazz Nobel writing in Outdoors Magic »

Ursula Martin defines herself as an ‘extreme rambler’. And that she certainly is. Between 2014 and 2015, she walked 3,700 miles in and around her homeland of Wales, all whilst undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer. Along the way she raised over £12,000 for cancer charities and helped to draw attention to the symptoms of ovarian cancer to thousands of people.

A few years later, Ursula embarked on another trek, hitchhiking from Wales to Eastern Europe to begin a solo walk across the bulk of the continent. Starting in Ukraine, she travelled through the Balkans and into Southern Europe, steadily making her way towards the Atlantic Ocean. All was going well enough until the beginning of 2020, when a roadblock arrived in the form of a global pandemic.