For the last year, my life feels like it’s constantly been determined by the latest TikTok trends, and I don’t think that’s something that will be ending any time soon! The latest TikTok trend I took part in was slightly different from the whipped coffee and cocktail nights I’ve indulged in before – I walked a marathon with my friends for charity. For the past month or so, my for you page has been full of videos captioned like ‘so we decided to walk a marathon lol’, followed by a series of clips of the users and their friends walking through fields and parks, making it look well… quite literally like a walk in the park. Let me tell you now: it’s not as easy as it looks. Not at all. However, while we all found the 26.2 mile walk difficult, it was an incredibly rewarding experience and a great opportunity to raise money for a charity close to our hearts.
One of the best things about walking a marathon around Liverpool is the diversity of locations you can walk through – we started in the middle of Smithdown and went literally everywhere you can think of in the city. Here are some of the best places to incorporate into the route if you’re thinking about walking a marathon around Liverpool over the Easter break, here are some of the best places to incorporate into the route.
The Parks
Image source: Visit Liverpool
Living in Smithdown, I often find myself in Sefton Park, Greenbank Park and sometimes Wavertree Sports Park, but when walking a marathon, you suddenly realise that there are so many other parks to explore! Our route covered at least five parks I’d never visited or perhaps even heard of before in some cases. Aside from Sefton and Greenbank, we walked through Calderstones Park, Festival Gardens, Princes Park, Newsham Park, Stanley Park and Everton Park. It seemed like the further in we got, the less exciting the parks were, but that could’ve been due to my pain increasing and the weather getting worse consistently throughout the day. When we hit Newsham and Stanley around the 15-17 miles mark, the rain was unrelenting, and it took a lot of perseverance not to just catch the bus home!
The Stadiums
Now, I’m not a massive football fan at all, but I can’t stress to you enough how excited I was to see Anfield on that dreary Sunday afternoon. We’d been walking for hours in a constant drizzle, and our lunch was looking like a soggy sandwich-type deal in Stanley Park. However, we were able to find shelter outside Anfield stadium for our 10-minute lunch break before carrying on with the marathon. Our walk past Everton’s Goodison Park was a lot briefer as we were just trying to get the walk done by then! However, I’d strongly recommend factoring in this part of our route if you’re a Liverpool fan by walking to Stanley Park through the stadium grounds.
City Sights
The Albert Dock is an iconic part of Liverpool, but for us it meant one thing – toilet break! It’s definitely well-worth remembering that there’s a free public toilet that’s still open at the Albert Dock, and given that we were on mile 23 by the time we got there, we appreciated the stop. The dock was also where we realised that we had fewer miles left to walk than we thought, so we were pretty happy from there onwards, as we began to walk back through the city centre, up Bold Street to the UoL campus. This bit of the walk was easy for us, as it was our regular walk back from a night out, so you could say we’ve done it in even worse states than after most of a marathon. When we reached the campus, we walked around the beautiful Abercromby Square, which I’ve hardly seen this year, thanks to online teaching! The most beautiful sight of all was the end of Smithdown Road, which meant we were so close to being back.
When we got back, the prosecco was flowing, takeaways were ordered, and we finally got to take our shoes off. I knew then that there was no way I’d be getting out of bed the next day unless it was an emergency! I definitely enjoyed walking a marathon, but I’m in no rush to do it again; it’s way harder than it looks on TikTok. We all agreed though that a half marathon could become a regular activity among us because it’s a good opportunity to get out for a long walk and catch up with your friends.
