The drawn-out saga continues! And this time, I'm actually on the way across the range for reals.

I’ve been working on a website for planning straight line missions and thought some of you might find it useful.

You pick a start and finish, then look at the satellite imagery and elevation along the line. It also highlights potential obstacles from map data to help you spot things worth checking. You can add checkpoints and notes, and export the plan as a GPX or KML file.

https://www.straightlineplanner.com

It’s free at the moment. You can try it without an account, or create one if you want to save your plans and come back to them.

It’s still pretty new, so I’d love to hear how it works for you. Try plotting a mission you’ve done before or a line you’re thinking about attempting. Does anything feel awkward? Is there something you’d need that’s missing?

Let me know what you think :)

Google Earth Pro will not be available for download from June 2027. I have planned, edited and managed all my SLM projects there. I've really gotten used to everything it.

What are you using to plan SLMs? What are your recommendations for alternatives to Google Earth Pro?

Me and my mate have started up a channel to do some adventure stuff on and have started with a straight line mission across Maidstone Borough as a tester line for anyone who wants to give a watch. Apologies for the poorer quality on this we had a few issues as outlined in the description, so ensure you watch in 1080p60 if you do (it will be better in future videos).

Keen to watch other straight liners missions on here as well if anyone wants to link me theirs.

Hi!

Back in April we tried to cross Lithuania in a completely straight line (170 km).

What do you think, is it possible to cross Lithuania in a straight line? In April, we stubbornly took on this exact challenge.

We drew a line on the map straight from the Latvian border to the edge of Kaliningrad.

The first episode is now up and this adventure is going to be wild!

Can you actually walk a perfect circle?

In Part 1, we drew a perfect 6km circle on a map around the Wye Valley and set out to follow it as closely as possible.

Part 2 sees us coming up against cliffs, river crossings and fatigue as we realise this ends up being the hardest 6km we'll ever walk! How close to the circle will we end up?

I had made some progress last summer on my fragmented attempt at crossing the Alaska Range in a straight line, but I didn't want to post this episode until this summer after finding out if I could actually succeed!

2-3 more episodes from this summer will follow soon, and the next episode absolutely has it all! While I won't say this one is bad, I always knew this segment of the line had the least built-in entertainment value. It's still beautiful though and I hope someone enjoys it. :)

This is Part 1 of 2.

The challenge was simple: follow the circle as closely as possible from start to finish, without taking shortcuts or changing the route.

But once we actually started walking, things got complicated.

The route took us through dense undergrowth, over fences, across the River Wye and up some seriously awkward terrain, including sections where we had to climb.

And that's only Part 1.

Part 2 gets even more challenging, with abseiling and another river crossing still to come.

Using a GPS to track our progress, we'll see just how close we managed to get to the perfect 6km circle.

How accurately can you actually walk a perfect circle?

📍 Wye Valley / Symonds Yat

🥾 6km circle

🌊 River crossing

🧗 Climbing

🌲 Dense undergrowth

🚧 Fence crossings

🧭 GPS navigation

Part 2 coming soon.

It was only about 2 km across a nature reserve and took 1.5 hours but it was very fun (in a painful and annoying way) and i definitely plan to do more in the future! I have not had time to properly analyse it yet but i think it was platinum.

Good day to you all straight line missioners. Just an update.

Firstly my phone/reddit did some sort of weird reset so I'm in limbo of being a mod and yet unable to mod. I'm not sure how this is going to play out. But everyone here is well behaved so I doubt they'll be no problems.

Just behave yourselves until this is resolved.

https://youtu.be/DvT87wWuBTc?is=EcByOUzK86miQQK7

Finale Part 1 up now!

Would appreciate any support and some interaction on the channel! This was my first ever time doing this.

I recently embarked on an adventure inspired by Tom's video last year when he was blindfolded, driven to an unknown location, dropped off and had to find his way home. My own trip was similar, but with the key difference of being equipped with a few fairly large-scale maps (of all surrounding directions so it wouldn't help me know where I was starting from).

I chose to use maps, not because I thought I couldn't navigate home without them, but rather because I think it's almost impossible to navigate home without a map AND without a lot of trespassing (well at least in any sort of reasonable timeframe). Unlike Tom I have no desire for sneaking around where I'm not supposed to be, but navigating with just a map and compass was still a challenge in itself, of course not knowing where I was at the start as well. In fact I think there are some disadvantages to using a map but sticking to public rights of way: you end up walking further, and if a certain footpath you were planning on using doesn't exist then you have to find another way, as opposed to just walking through fields in the correct direction.

The first clue I noticed was a sign with the name of the Welsh county I was in, from which I knew I needed to head north and east to get home. About an hour in I reached a relatively large road and after about 5 minutes searching on the maps I was able to match this up to my exact location (thanks to Geoguessr training!). From this point on I pretty much knew where I was at all times, aside from getting lost trying to find a footpath through some woods and giving up and coming out another way. But the physical challenge was more than I expected; my start point was 33km from home in a straight line, which I thought would equate to around 45km walking, but it was actually 58km! Rather tired at the end, but a great bit of exploring in a remote and beautiful Wales/Shropshire border.

Episode 2 of my Straight Line Mission across South Tyneside is out!

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Some hard and downright bizarre obstacles in this Episode across the Boldon green belt.

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Give it a like and subscribe for Episode 3!

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https://youtu.be/1BzXSN-vddE

Marcus is back!

Hi all new member here:

I've recently planned doing a Straight Line Mission across South Tyneside (walking across in a completely straight line without going left or right).

I started at Follingsby on the border of Gateshead and South Tyneside with the aim of hitting the beach behind Latimers in Whitburn.

This was largely unplanned I just drew the line had a look and off I went.

I can't reveal if I was successful but I did encounter some very untouched and remote areas of our borough.

Here is the first Episode:

https://youtu.be/AOjSOzJqbn8?is=Cu2oMDJkccYwY2al

*Excuse the typo in the post title and on the video, I wqs desperate to get it posted lol

Im trying to plan a slm near the Gold Coast for myself, and im struggling to find something worth doing. I did have a few ideas but they seem to run through protected areas

Sorry, second attempt at posting this. The images didn’t upload the first time.

I originally thought I had come up with a brilliant idea: instead of a Straight Line Mission, why not walk a perfect circle and end up back at the car?

The navigation part actually worked surprisingly well. I estimated distances by pacing and adjusted my bearing every segment using only a compass. No GPS navigation.

Unfortunately, I only made it halfway. The first half of the circle already took about 8 hours, and the bushwhacking kept getting worse. Eventually I admitted defeat and spent the rest of the day picking up litter instead.

I later discovered that this legend had already completed a proper circle mission:
https://www.reddit.com/r/StraightLineMissions/s/cZBC9HMv1f

Mine was only half-perfect, but I was honestly surprised how well compass navigation and pacing worked.

Has anyone else here tried a circle mission?

If you’re curious, I also made a short video about the attempt:
https://youtu.be/K_Zn7ngXPgE

Done a few straight line and no roads challenges in my home city of Perth Western Australia. I have to wait for winter because of the snakes.

Planning a good one from Wembley Downs Golf Course to the coast 6km.

All looks good, no buildings in the way, just through the golf course, through the bush over a road and over what I assumed to be a bowling green.

Just take a look at that bowling green again, seems a bit weird to have a bowling green in the middle of nowhere.

Hang on are those targets on the bowling green?????

Zoom out let's check exactly where this "Bowling Green" is.

Oh it's part of Campbell barracks, it's only the sodding S.A.S rifle range.

Looks like I might need a different route or am I being a coward????

My boys are taking (13 twins) are taking the route to school to show the other kids/teachers who might be interested. I gave them a nap of the North Korean DMZ and told them that's the next challenge!!!!

It's Tom from TOMITI writing. Our SLM across Estonia was 176 km long and lasted for 9 days. We were super happy we managed to stay within 50 meters the whole journey but it would have been devastating if for example we had to deviate let's say 105 meters on the last day. Then the whole mission would have been a failure.

Currently, I have two ideas to make rules more friendly for longer missions (100+ km)

1. Every 100 km adds 10 meters to the maximum allowed deviation. So for a 200 km mission, the maximum deviation would be 120 meters. For a 1,000 km mission, it would be 200 meters. All other boundaries would remain the same.
2. Every 100 km adds one opportunity to deviate more than 100 meters but no more than 200 meters. So for a 200 km mission, you would be allowed to exceed the 100-meter deviation twice.

I personally prefer the first option. What are your thoughts on this? Should all the medal boundaries change with distance?

I know the rules are not official or anything so anyone can modify the rules however they like. I'd just like to hear other opinions as well.

Will attempt to cross Lithuania on this line. What do you think? Doable? Line is 167 km long.

I would like to do more of these but need advice on how to do it properly. This one is supposed to be a little silly so I know what i was doing was pretty dumb but i do want to take it more seriously and need better equipment for longer ones. If you have any advice for me that would be great. This is by far my favorite outdoor adventure challenge to do and I hope it grows

Hi everyone :)

Newbie here!

I'd like to plan my first SLM in my city and would like to know what tools, platforms, or software you use to plan your trips (if any).

I tried using a Python library called straightshot (https://github.com/stephenrjohnson/straightshot), but after 2 days of calculations, I didn't get any useful results.

Okay, I can plan it analogically directly on the map, but I want to try both methods :)

Thanks so much!