The leggers must have been made of stern stuff too. The tunnel is about 3.25 miles long and took up to four hours to get through.Lying on your back with only candles for light. I bet your whole body ached after that. If you visit www.penninewaterways.co.uk it gives you the history of this tunnel. It says the Canal company had to bring in a traffic control system where boats went east to west for four hours then west to east for four hours to stop fights in the tunnel. Funnily enough two hundred years after it opened this is still how they get boats through but now due to the health and safety boats are towed through tied together using electric tugs.

Sandra and Richard Brown must have clocked up a fair few miles between them. Sandra has done the Centurion race more times and in more countries than anyone else and, until recently, held the women's LEJOG record, as well as competing in all sorts of ultra races.
Catharine

Ignore my comment on ascent to distance ratio, should have read Elton's post more carefully. He went over, not through, in which case he can probably claim the ascent as well as the distance record. Not sure which route he followed but it looks as if he climbed around 700 feet on each trip. If he really did do the trip 4 times a day for 40 years, then he climbed around 40 million feet, getting on for 8,000 miles. Even John Merrill can't get close to that.

John Merrill claims 182,000 miles in 33 years on his website. I believe William Wordsworth walked almost every day and a 20 mile walk in the Lake District fells was not unusual, but I haven't found any comment on his total mileage. Thomas Bourne probably has one record that will not be matched - the lowest ratio of height gain to distance walked!

Thomas Bourne of Marsden walked barge horses from 1811 to 1852 over Stanedge on the Huddersfield canal while the bargemen legged their barges through Stanedge tunnel. From the age of 11, reputedly walking four times a day between Marsden and Diggle for 40 years, he covered 215, 852 miles. Is this a record?