I’m Back From 40k To Far Away – Here’s How It Went

I’m back!

After spending a couple of weeks traveling around as part of the Frequent Miler 40k To Far Away challenge, I arrived “home” on Tuesday night.

Shae and I are usually around each other pretty much 24/7, so being apart for two weeks was strange, so it was good to see her and Truffles again once I got back.

I’d hoped to write a little more on here about what I was getting up to during the trip, but I was either busy exploring a city or busy sleeping, so I didn’t have the time or energy to keep you updated like I thought I might. Seeing as #40kFaraway was a Frequent Miler adventure rather than a No Home Just Roam one, any time I had to write posts were spent writing for that site.

In case you missed what 40k To Faraway was about, Greg, Nick and I from Frequent Miler each had 40,000 credit card points and $400 and had to travel as far as we could. That had to cover everything – flights, other transportation, food, accommodation, activities, etc. One of the features of the challenge was that the person who physically traveled the farthest wouldn’t necessarily be the winner. Instead, Frequent Miler readers would get to decide the winner, taking into account the distance traveled, budget spent, who put together the best itinerary, who did the most interesting stuff, etc.

I managed to stretch the budget to enable me to travel for two full weeks. I’ve written several in-depth accounts for Frequent Miler of what I got up to during my 14 days, so I won’t be covering all that again here. Instead, I’ll give you a quick recap and you can click through to the full posts below to read more.

Days 1-4 Of Stephen’s 40k: Not Much Sleep, Lots Of Sights, Troll Hunting & More

The three of us started together in Washington D.C., but then went our separate ways. I headed up to Newark, then over to Madrid, Spain by way of Toronto, Canada.

I spent most of the day in Madrid, walking 10 miles on a self-guided walking tour. It was a much more interesting city than I’d been expecting, so I’d like to return in the future.

After Madrid, I flew to Brussels. I wasn’t there to explore Belgium’s capital though; instead, I took a bus north to a town called Boom.

If you’ve been following our travels over the last year or two, you might remember that Shae and I went troll hunting at The Morton Arboretum just outside of Chicago last year.

Those trolls were created by Thomas Dambo and we found out earlier this year that he’d created a different exhibit at Bernheim Forest in Kentucky called Forest Giants In A Giant Forest.

Well, it turns out that Thomas Dambo was commissioned to create several trolls for the Tomorrowland festival in Boom. The festival is held at De Schorre in Boom, so off I went to find 7 Trolls & The Magical Tower.

Days 5-6 Of Stephen’s 40k: Walking, Sightseeing, Walking, Family, Walking & Sleeping

That evening I took a Flixbus from Brussels to Paris, France. I arrived in Paris at 2:30am and was only there for six hours, but I walked another 10 miles to see as much of the city as I could.

From Paris it was another Flixbus over to London, crossing the English Channel on a ferry along the way. I walked another 10 miles around the capital before getting an amazing night’s sleep in a hostel.

The next day I took a coach down to Guildford, a town near where I grew up and where Shae and I lived for a couple of years. It’s a cute town with quite a lot to see and do, including a cathedral, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland statues (Lewis Carroll had a home in Guildford), a castle and more.

Guildford isn’t that far from where my parents live, so I stayed overnight at their place, enjoying a home-cooked meal of cottage pie and apple crumble with custard.

Days 7-10 Of Stephen’s 40k: Trolls, Lots Of Flying & A Risk That Didn’t Pay Off

The next morning it was time to fly to my next destination – Copenhagen in Denmark. Denmark is where Thomas Dambo – the creator of all the trolls – is from and sure enough, there are lots of his trolls all around the country.

In particular, there’s a collection of them around the outskirts of Copenhagen called The 6 Forgotten Giants. I rented a car for the day and drove around to find them all.

Having found all the trolls/giants, I made my way to the airport and flew down to Madrid. That’s because I’d actually booked a round trip flight from Newark before rather than just a one-way ticket. Check out this post for more about why I did that and how that affected the rest of my trip.

I stayed overnight at Newark airport, then took a Greyhound bus down to Atlantic City. I’d been expecting to take advantage of a couple of free nights at the Hard Rock Casino & Hotel by status matching, but they were booked up as it was Columbus Day weekend. Thankfully I managed to find a hostel-style Airbnb for $30 per night.

Days 11-14 Of Stephen’s 40k: Beating The Casino, D.C. Segway Tour, Art & All The Way Back Home

I still ended up doing the status match as it came with some other perks – free entry to their buffet, $65 of free play, comedy club tickets, etc. I managed to turn the $65 of free play into $44.75 cold hard cash, so that was a bonus.

Part of my strategy for the competition was to make it all the way back “home” to Portsmouth. I therefore worked my way down the east coast over the next couple of days, stopping in Washington D.C. to do a Segway tour…

…and then on to Richmond, Virginia where I revisited Belle Isle and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts simply because they’re both so great.

From Richmond I took another Greyhound bus to Norfolk before taking the ferry over to Portsmouth to finish my trip.

By the end of the challenge, I still had $17.56 left in my budget. I would’ve been under budget by a lot more, but I’d allowed myself to splurge over the final 48 hours of the trip by taking an Uber, using electric scooters to get around, eating out, etc.

Voting

Now that the three of us have finished our trips, Frequent Miler readers are able to vote on who they think the winner is. While I’d love your vote, I don’t want you to vote for me just because you follow me here on No Home Just Roam.

If you’ve been following along with all our trips though, I’d encourage you to check out this summary post which recaps the highlights of all three of our trips and includes a poll at the bottom where you can vote for your favorite. Both Greg and Nick put together great trips themselves, so I have no problem at all with you voting for them if you think one of their trips was better. If I was completely neutral in all this, I’d have a really hard time picking a winner as we all managed to do some pretty cool stuff.

What’s Next

We’ll be returning to regular stuff on this blog now. We have a bunch of posts about things we got up to in Virginia; we’re also now in West Virginia, so we’ll have posts about what we’re up to here over the coming weeks.

I’m also planning on writing a couple of posts about the trolls in both Belgium and Denmark, so stay tuned for those.