Straight line missions

Straight line missions are a form of travel in which the adventurer aims to cross an entire park, region, or country in a straight line, typically on foot. The goal of such travel is to introduce the adventurer to remote or offroad areas that are typically overlooked, but when done on scale it often requires extensive planning and preparation. Such a route necessitates leaving roads and paths and traveling directly through forests, hedges, and terrain obstacles.

History

YouTube adventurer and blogger Tom Davies made the first attempt to cross a country (Wales) in a straight line in 2019, triggering a wave of interest in the form of travel. Others have attempt straight line missions in the Cairngorms National Park and the Isle of Man.

Planning

Choosing a location

First you will need to decide where to attempt your straight line mission. For hikers and mountaineers, the most feasible challenge will be crossing a preserve or park. Doing so is the easiest way to avoid private property but may necessitate crossing difficult terrain.

Consider the length of the mission. As you will not be following a path and will not be turning to the left or right to avoid obstacles and terrain, you won't be able to go as far in a day as you would along a hiking trail. The British Isles' terrain features hedges and gorse bushes in rural areas, and these will slow your travel greatly. Don't expect to travel more than 10 miles (16 km) each day, and don't plan for a route that is more than 50 miles (80 km) (about five days of missioning) without somewhere you can deviate from the line to rest and recuperate. As a result, long but narrow countries such as Norway or Wales are the only ones realistic for country-crossing missions. For a first mission, you may want to consider a smaller region with public access to become used to the complicated maneuvering associated with missioning.

The ideal regions for such missions are uninhabited but not too-remote. While you will need to avoid homes and gardens (in some countries all private property), remote areas with no phone service create risks in the case of medical emergencies. In remote areas there may also be nature reserves, military areas and other off-limits places.

You may want to check your provider's cell phone service coverage for the area in question, and will definitely want to bring one, if not multiple devices with you on your journey.

Mapping a straight line

You will need a suitable mapping application (or equivalent maps) to plan your route. Google Earth, for instance, allows you to edit its satellite imagery by adding paths in order to measure distances and terrain. Although your line will of course include only a beginning and end point, with no curves or deviations, it will need extensive tweaking in order to be practically feasible. You will need to avoid private property, depending upon right to roam laws in your respective country, and any other off-limit areas. Some maps are better and more complete in the marking of areas to avoid than others.

If more than a day in travel time, the route will need to contain "stash points," such as campsites, staging points or roads where you can either stash food and water or arrange for someone to meet you at a specified time with necessities. As an added bonus, you may be able to find a short stretch of your route that follows a road or path, which will give you some respite between areas of more difficult terrain.

You will need to check the "terrain" or "altitude" feature of the maps or software you are using to ensure that there are no cliffs along your route. Even the best software has limited elevation detection qualities, though, so you will need potential trouble spots before traversing the route in order to ensure that there are no small (and therefore undetectable in satellite's macro view) banks following rivers or mountainsides. Forests, in particular, can be poorly judged by imaging software and can conceal steep embankments. Regular maps, often based on overlapping photos taken by aircraft at lower altitude, and sometimes manually edited, may make a better effort to be usable for ground navigation. For some countries, the photos are available on the net, even in 3D versions. Dense forests pose a problem also there.

Beside topography, you will need to ensure that your straight line does not cross other forms of dangerous untraversable, or exhausting terrain, such as some glaciers, some types of bogs and block fields. In some areas, these features are seasonal, and conditions on the ground will likely not match satellite imagery in this regard. A good terrain map may be better at showing seasonal features. People used to hiking through rough terrain in the region may be good at identifying probable challenges from hints on maps and photos.

Make sure there are no live rail lines or highways that you will need to cross on your route (unless your route goes through a proper railroad or road crossing, of course). These could be easily missed or overlooked as you obviously can't turn to the left or right to find a crossing. Crossing a live rail line is a serious criminal offense and is a must-avoid in any straight line mission.

When your straight line is mapped and is do-able, you will need to save and download the line and upload it to the mapping software on your GPS tracking device. Make sure your route is aligned entirely with the route you drew on your computer software or paper map and that the location reader on the GPS is precise.

Choosing when to travel

Cities and farms have elaborate drainage systems in place in order to prevent flooding and to make the ground composition suitable for development or agriculture. However, rural and off-road areas haven't seen this level of human intervention and therefore can be impassable during parts of a year if not year-round. Planning the time of year to travel will be essential to the success of a mission. Rural areas of the British Isles, for example, can become overgrown by gorse bushes and other thorny plants during the summer, making travel much more difficult if not impossible. On the other hand, seasonal flooding can turn solid ground during one part of the year into a flooded bog or swamp.

While winter is likely a better time to attempt a straight line mission in many temperate climates, be aware of temperature differences along the route, particularly due to elevation changes. Remote mountain valleys can become dangerously cold in winter, may be avalanche traps and often don't contain weather stations to monitor conditions, so you will need to bring spare clothes, considering that balance between warmth and the weight of your backpack.

Preparation

See also: Wilderness backpacking

Make sure you're physically well and fit before you leave. Make sure you're able to cope with the conditions and climate of the place where you are traveling and that you're comfortable hiking with a heavy backpack.

Buying supplies

You will need a GPS tracking system and perhaps a satellite phone to attempt a straight line mission. Bring batteries from different battery packs that all fit your devices, as you will likely need to replace batteries on a multi-day mission. While it is convenient to bring one pack of batteries for the GPS, one pack of faulty batteries could leave your GPS tracking device powerless and prematurely end your expedition.

If you're planning to film the journey, in order to validate it, you will need to capture the entire route. The best tool for this is a highly portable and adaptable camera such as a GoPro camera. These can become glitchy in damp conditions, so you may want to bring a backup. That said, consider the weight of everything you bring in your backpack; make sure the total weight is do-able on tough mountain slopes and in hedges/bushes before you leave for the trip.

Food and water supplies are essential but may need to be stashed along the way (see below) depending upon the length of the journey. As with any backpacking mission, other essentials like toilet paper or essential medicines will need to be considered as well.

You will need some tough clothes, particularly in temperate areas which are likely to contain thick undergrowth, thistles, and thorny bushes such as gorse. A couple pairs of thick gloves will come in handy. In an area with potentially dangerously wildlife, you may want to bring some form of protection such as bear spray.

If your route crosses a river or lake which you can't cross on foot, that may be workable if you can bring – or even better, arrange for support crew to bring – a kayak to cross the body of water. If you're going alone, however, you will have to consider stash points and where you will dispose of the kayak once you've crossed the water body as it will be too heavy to carry for a distance. For still water, a raft made from your backpacks, walking sticks and a tarp may be an option, at least if the body of water is narrow enough that you can pass one at a time and use a line to get the raft back.

Stash points

If your expedition will take longer than a day, you will need to prepare stash points along your route. Ideally, you will have a support crew who will know your stash points and arrange to meet you there. Find some points where your straight line crosses a road or campsite (or adjust your line to include them per above) and allocate these as stash points with food, water, and a tent. Consider multiple locations for stopping each night, with different locations along the route depending upon how far you travel that day. An unforeseen bank, forest undergrowth, or patch of bushes could cause you to travel less distance than expected and force you to use your nearest stash point. Be flexible!

Stash points allow carrying less equipment, which certainly is nice in rough terrain. However, if you are used to carrying tent and other equipment and can manage carrying them also in the terrain ahead, then there is no need to have such arrangements for every night. However, food for more than a few days is heavy. You may also want to have a chance to get help if the terrain was worse than you anticipated or if you had an accident. If phone coverage is weak along your route, this may be a real safety issue.

The mission

Once your stash points are prepared and you're ready, you can begin the mission! Make sure you are familiar with how your GPS functions, such as whether it faces north or in the direction that you're traveling. You may need to program this in your settings in order to avoid deviations.

Terrain features will make it difficult if not impossible to stay "bang-on line" so deviations will likely be necessary; the goal is to make the deviations as small as possible. This is why it's so important to have both your current location and your planned route programmed precisely into your GPS software. On a multi-day expedition, deviations within 25 metres (82 ft) are ideal, but you may be forced to deviate up to 50 metres (160 ft). Deviations of 50 metres (160 ft) to 100 metres (330 ft) are the maximum you can realistically take before entirely compromising the point of the mission. Take your deviations from the route wisely and only when absolutely needed, as every deviation will subtract from your mission's Burdell Score, which takes into account even the smallest deviations from the route and calculates a percentage grade out of 100 based upon the accuracy of your route to the straight line. After the mission, you can upload your actual travel route from your GPS device to a score-calculating website such as the Straight Line Project to receive your score.

Precautions

Private property

One of the most important considerations for straight line travel is private property. Right to access in the Nordic countries makes straight line missioning in these countries much easier, but you will still need to take care to avoid traveling on a line that takes you into gardens or sensitive property areas such as farmers' fields. In areas without right to roam such as England and particularly the U.S., crossing private land without permission may go against civil or criminal law. Outside of right to access countries, you are best advised to stick to public access areas such as parks and public preserves.

Be careful about crossing fences, or hedges in the British Isles. Although barbed wire fences are crossable if you have gloves and you know what you're doing, there are two problems with this. First, by doing so you are likely entering private property where your access is restricted. Although trespassing is a civil rather than criminal issue in some countries, it's still likely to result in confrontation and ejection from their land, and not in a straight line! If there is no right to access in the country, a landowner or farmer will likely direct you to leave their property in a route that takes you off a straight line. Second, many fences are electrified and while probably not to an extent that would be fatal, being shocked or electrocuted by a fence is obviously not ideal. In summary, take great care to avoid private property without the express consent of the owner.

Take into account travel restrictions before traveling. As travel restrictions are typically enforced via checkpoints on highways, you will be bypassing those checkpoints on your expedition and could be inadvertently breaking the law. Likewise, make sure the country in which you are traveling is politically stable with robust rule of law and protections outside urban areas.

Health concerns

Don't attempt a straight line mission if you have an underlying health condition that could become a serious risk in areas where you cannot receive immediate help. A straight line mission may take you through areas that would be difficult for emergency crews to access. When planning and traveling on your route, be aware of the remoteness of the location and the accessibility of the site. On the other hand, be aware of potential routes to safety if you need to leave the route. Your GPS device and satellite phone are extremely important for such a scenario as well as being useful along the route.