@christianp Closest to 100km for me would have been driving from Whitehorse to Dawson City in the Yukon, but I wasn't alone in the car. Unaccompanied I probably haven't exceeded 1km
@christianp It’s a guess, but I’ve signed in to a trail book in the morning out of season only to find my name the only one there on return. Fairly confident on the 10km. But 100km? That’s nearly impossible on land. I’ve hiked (as a small group, so wouldn’t count anyway) in Kirgizstan but as remote as that was the next settlement was always at most a day’s hike away
Really interesting responses to this!
The distribution of votes remained pretty steady throughout. I think 10km might have had a late burst of interest. I'm very interested in the people who voted 100km - where do you think you did it?
I regret not having a 10m option. Dutch people seem to really be packed in tightly!
If anyone's interested, my answer was 1km, based on having driven through Northumberland and into Scotland and Cumbria on my own many times. There are stretches of road with no buildings for a few km, so I must have been 1km from anyone else at least once.
@christianp My answer was 100m, which still feels high, I reckon I've always been within like 20m of another person. I've been to remote places where my group would be the only people for kilometers, but I've always been with a group. When I'm alone, there's probably always been someone in a neighbouring house, or in another car driving on the same road.
@christianp I must admit that I put down 10k, but the more I think about it the less convinced I am that that's true. Might need to get some of my maps out this weekend and actually try to work it out.
@christianp 10km for me, for the same reason but in Australia (where everything is 10x bigger 😉). But I’m still skeptical that I would have been 10km from another driver …
@christianp I've been solo hiking in wilderness areas where I don't see people all day so it wasn't hard for me to estimate that gets me up to 2km or 5km. Even though I rounded up to 10km that seems maybe a bit high.
@christianp Yeah - I chose 1km because I grew up in a fairly rural place and bicycling to the next town a couple km over without encountering a single car would make it likely I hit the 1km mark at some point (without any real way to test or verify that).
@christianp This is a really interesting question. I did some solo driving in New Mexico, which can be quite sparsely populated at times, but I don't think I would have ever got 1km away from everyone
@christianp I wonder how much perceived population density impacts these answers. In the states I definitely feel there would be more places people could not be within the 10km distance than in the UK
@samhansen absolutely! The replies from Dutch people are hilarious - none of them have said they'd even been more than 100m away from another person in the Netherlands
@christianp
Selected 1 km, but I'm not sure I ever reached that.
I did do a parachute course, so that's a couple of jumps from a plane at over 2km high, but even then, there are often a couple of jumpers, and I doubt if they are ever a whole kilometer apart.
That aside, not a chance. Some of the places where I felt "in the middle of nowhere", are typically 500 meters from the closest farm or house, and the next runner or cyclist is probably around the corner, feeling all alone as well.
@christianp I've been to some pretty remote parts of Scotland, though not on my own very often, but even then, I'm really not confident that there would have been no other living people in a 10km radius. I'm on the fence as to whether there's anywhere in the UK where you can be 10km from a road, and even the most remote roads have people that use them.
@bbrfnt terrified! That's really interesting. 10 metres is still shouting distance. A football goalie could be at least 10 metres away from anyone else when the action is at the other end of the pitch. Or, walking on a quiet beach you could easily be a few dozen metres from the nearest person
@christianp@bbrfnt in scouts, before I joined, they used to do a one night solo hike. I always wanted to do it for the experience but it was no longer allowed (probably for good reasons, we were kids). So I guess that would have been 10km but wasn't.
@christianp Once cycled a completely empty trail in the Blue Mountains in Australia. Pretty sure I was all alone at the far end of that trail, so I chose 10 kilometres. But I think that was about the only time.
@christianp i voted 100m. i have been on solo hikes where i was probably on the upper end of that and maybe exceeded 1km, but i've not been so remote that i can say it definitively
@christianp Driving in parts of Australia has surely had me above the 10km, but I can't imagine ever being confident of the 100km without being a solo pilot/sailor as you said
@vosje62 how sure are you about that 10km? I don't think I can find a circle with radius 10km in Scotland and no villages in it. And that's ignoring the odd farmer or other hiker not near a dwelling
@ernstdemoor 10 metres isn't far though! You've never stood on your own in the middle of a field, or rowed a boat across a lake? Even standing in the middle of an otherwise empty football pitch or playground would do it
@christianp I was thinking about that but probably not. The only occasion I could think of was wintersports, but even then I do that together with my family, and we wait for each other. And nowadays the skipistes are filled with other people anyways. Okee, it might be 20 or 30 meters, but that is still far from 100…
@christianp I think the South Pacific might have a point like that at the moment, at least when the ISS isn't too close. But it will change by the day. https://www.marinetraffic.com
@catarinac yeah, I'm really not sure. I've driven out into the countryside on my own, but you're always surrounded by farms, and you can almost never see 1km of roads in front and behind.
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