Covering Europe is key to a high WHS score: the List is definitely eurocentric, and the high density of sites combined with good infrastructure and relatively short distances make for easy pickings. I like to set myself (travel) goals, and was wondering how long it would take me to see all WHS in Europe using only (sometimes longish) weekend breaks. Earlier I have written about how I choose destinations and prepare for my longer trips. Here’s my plan for the shorter ones in Europe. All with one goal in mind: ‘completing’ Europe!
Narrowing it down
UNESCO has divided the WHS into their own version of ‘continents’, and now has 499 sites in 'Europe and North America'. On this website I have 500 as the total number because of Jerusalem, which is attributed to Jordan on the UNESCO list while I have it linked to Israel. That’s not meant as a political statement, but a mere practicality in the database. It doesn’t matter anyway for this description of achieving my goal, as I have been to the Old City of Jerusalem WHS already. When you leave out the sites in the USA and Canada from the list of 500, there are 461 sites left in Europe.
Of these 461, I have already visited 357. Looking at the general overview , my Europe score is relatively high. It’s also clear that one needs a high score in Europe to be among the top WH visitors. This means there are 104 WHS left ‘to do’ for me. Six of these however lie in “colonies” in geographical different continents. I will deduct those as they logistically need different trips. They are: the Lagoons of New Caledonia , the Pitons of Réunion , Willemstad (Curaçao), Henderson Island , Gough and Inaccessible Islands and St. George . (Bermuda). So I have 98 left!
Making a plan
I started working on a plan to cover these final 98 sites. I created yet another spreadsheet , and divided these remaining 98 WHS into 3 categories:
- Weekend trips (without taking a day off from work, so Fri evening - Sun evening)
- Long weekend trips (3-4 days, Thur – Sun, making good use of public holidays)
- Short breaks (up to one week)
The smaller blocks (category 1) are actually preferred because they won’t cost me vacation days. Of course one could lump a number of the weekend destinations together into 1 or 2 week trips, but that’s not what I want (I need those for destinations further away)!
What becomes clear quickly is that the countries on the fringes of Europe (such as Russia, Turkey, Georgia and Israel) warrant full trips on their own. They do not share the same characteristics, are more challenging logistically. Two sites are even impossible to visit within one week: for Wrangel Island cruises take about 14 days for a roundtrip and Putorana Plateau costs at least 10 days if you can arrange it at all. Derbent also seems terrible to get to under your own steam, although more due to safety than remoteness.
How long will it still take me?
It would take me a daunting 65 different trips all together to ‘complete’ Europe:
- 17 different weekends
- 30 different long weekends
- 16 short breaks
- 2 specials
At my current level of some 7 weekend trips a year, it would cost me at least 10 years (assuming I can find time in my travel schedule to fit in those one week short breaks). Even without any work or money or stamina limitations, it would still take 294 days to string them all together in successive visits. But this whole excercise has made me more aware about the logistic possibilities, and I found out that there are more weekend trips still doable for me than I thought. So watch out for WHS reports of the Parforce Hunting Landscape, Burgundy and the Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans in the coming weeks!