Weekend adventure ideas for adults, close to home

A morning

Three or four hours, back by lunch.

1. Walk to the next town Nobody knows the stretch between two towns because everybody drives it. Walk it. Four to six kilometers of fields, back roads and the last house before open country, then coffee in a town you only know from the sign.
2. Cross to the far bank Pick the river, canal or lake you live near and cross it. The other side of the water is almost always the part of town you know least. Bridges are the fastest way into it.
3. The old main road Find the road that was the way through before the bypass was built and walk it end to end. Old inns, old gas stations and the shape of the town as it used to be.
4. Climb the nearest lookout tower Plenty of wooded hills have one. Count the steps on the way up; you'll want to tell someone afterward.
5. Follow a bus route on foot Pick a local bus route and walk part of it. The stops are ready-made markers, and the bus is your way home when you've had enough.

A whole day

Pack lunch, start early, and come back by transit.

1. Terminus to terminus Walk the entire length of a bus or streetcar line from one end to the other. Pick a route that crosses the whole town. It's a full day, and a town you'll never see the same way again.
2. A stage of a long-distance path There's a marked long-distance trail within reach of most towns. Walk one stage of it, bus or train out, walk back, and you've started something you can finish over a year of weekends.
3. The old rail line Old lines are often trails now: flat, straight, quiet, lined with bridges and platforms nobody uses. Walk one to the next town along it.
4. Home to work on foot If you normally ride or drive it, walk your commute once, by a route well off your usual line. Finding out how long it really takes is half the interest.
5. A day without wheels No car, no train, no bike, from waking up to going to bed. Plan it the night before or it gets tight by mid-afternoon.
6. A town you don't live in Take the train somewhere forty minutes away that you've never had a reason to visit, and walk it for the day. Arriving doesn't count. Walking does.

Adventures with a map in your hand

These are about the shape of the route rather than the destination.

1. The big square Pick four corners on the map so that the sides add up to ten kilometers or so, walk the square, and end where you began.
2. A route from an old map Find a historic map of your area, online or in a library, and walk a route from it. Some streets will be gone. That's the interesting part.
3. Draw it first Plan a route through streets you've never used on paper the night before, then walk it without rerouting. Paper doesn't reroute you.
4. A shape on the map Walk a route that reads as a recognizable shape when you look at the track afterward: a heart, an arrow, a fish. Plan it the evening before.
5. Circle something big Walk all the way around a lake, a park, an airport fence or a reservoir. A full circuit is a different thing from a visit.

Weekend adventures with other people

Groups walk slower and go farther.

1. Three generations, one walk Take someone older and someone younger than you on the same outing. The oldest know the shortcuts; the youngest don't want any.
2. Ten thousand steps on a day out A zoo, a museum district, a town you're wandering with friends. Ten thousand steps happen by themselves if the day is long enough.
3. Taking turns with the bag Share the day's load and the decisions: whoever carries the bag picks the direction until the next handover.
4. A guest's eyes Take someone who doesn't know your area and let them lead for an hour. For a guest everything is new; for you, only what they stop at.

Pick by how far you'll go

Keeping the weekends going

The first few of these happen on their own. After that, the limiting factor is coming up with the next one on a Friday night. That's the gap RLQuest fills: each morning it hands you three to ten quests from a library of more than 2,700, and the weekend ones scale up with the time you've said you have. Uncover fourteen new tiles with no particular destination. Finish seven kilometers from where you started, as the crow flies. Walk the stretch between two towns. Photograph a lookout tower, a boundary stone or a lighthouse, drawn from more than 1.5 million real places across Europe and North America, and be the first player to complete a quest there for a first find. The app checks the recorded route, the new hexagons on your map and the photo, and every weekend out fills in more of a map you'll still be looking at in five years.

It's free to download for iPhone and Android, and a Premium subscription adds more quests per day. The list above is yours either way; the app keeps the Friday-night question answered.