Anzegem resident and dentist Karel Sabbe left for New Zealand today to travel The Long Path Way, a 3000km trail in a very varied landscape. “New Zealand, as many know, is a beautiful country, but there you can really walk along that one path past volcanoes, through tropical rainforest, on pearly white beaches, along glaciers, you really come across all kinds of things,” says Sabbe.
Sabbe will also be forced to kayak a 120km stretch. “By the time I started kayaking, I had been walking 100 km a day for about ten days, so it would be quite a challenge to sit still in a kayak,” he explains.
All that makes it even more challenging than the trail from Mexico to Canada, which he walked 4,200 km a year and a half ago in record time. The Anzegem native is also the first Belgian ever to run the Barkley Marathons in the US within time. In the meantime, he is already looking forward to the summer, when he will run a day race of 170 km around Mont-Blanc.