As the Crow Flies

The month of travelling has finally drawn to a close. Over the last five weeks I have travelled all over England for my research. We also had our trip to London, and I attended the conference in Plymouth. Of course there were also 12 trips to Sheffield for my job as a Lecturer.

I’ve done the math (no small accomplishment for those who know my mathematical prowess) and here are the totals:

I went to Sheffield 12 times. This adds up to 498 miles (stupid UK uses miles) or 802 kilometres.

The rest of the travel, the conference, the London trip and all my research interviews, adds up to 2468 miles or 3972 kilometres.

That makes for a grand total of 2966 miles or 4774 kilometres.

Just to put this in perspective, if you travelled in a straight line, as the crow flies, from Hamilton, Ontario to Los Angeles, you would need to keep going for 1300 more kilometres to reach this total. Or you could head in the other direction and choose to arrive just outside of Dublin Ireland. Alternatively, for those who would like to remain faithful to the True North Strong and Free, you could travel between Antigonish, Nova Scotia to Victoria, British Columbia, but you would still need to go 241 kilometres further.

All of this took place between September 23rd and October 26th. Its five weeks I’m not soon to forget.

Now as if this travel was not enough, we will be travelling another 5548 kilometres on Wednesday. We are making the trip from Manchester to Hamilton for a week to get things sorted in preparation for coming home. This brings us to the grand total of 10,322 kilometres travelled. That’s a quarter of the way around the world. Plus, this was the final component I needed to successfully include planes, trains and automobiles in my methods of transportation over this period of travel.

I feel like this has been quite the accomplishment. This was the big hurdle of time I knew I had to get through before we could prepare to move back to Canada. My interviews went well, the conference was great, London was a blast. If only there was some kind of Girl Guide badge or something that I could have to outwardly show my accomplishment. Maybe the lines on my face and the dark circles under my eyes are all I have to show for it!