Man who walked 15,504 miles around the world to find out if it really is a terrible place revealed his verdict

If you've ever hiked a six-hour trail, a mountain, or even a few flights of stairs, you can begin to understand just how difficult it would be to walk around the world.

There are dozens - if not hundreds of ways - you travel around the world, and choosing to do so by foot surely has to be the hardest way, but tell that to Steven Newman who did exactly that - who walked 15,509 miles.

In April 1983, he set off from Ohio on a solo hike that would take him across 21 countries over four years before finally returning home in April, 1987.

Steven Newman spent four years hiking around the world in the 80s (YouTube/Bethel Museum)

Speaking to the New York Times two years after completing his trek, he said: "I don't really like walking that much. I just knew if you wanted some stories, go for a walk.''

So how did it all come about?

Well, he confessed in a blog on his website that his 'dream of walking around the world was born in a nine-year-old’s excitable mind'.

He wrote: "It was during one of those frequent southern Ohio rainy afternoons, when my imagination was lost in the pages of a stack of old National Geographic magazines.

"Though the covers of that dignified periodical may have been worn and faded at the time, the beauty of the glossy photographs inside was still unmistakably very much alive.

"I knew then and there that someday I had to visit all those exotic lands and meet all those smiling faces.”

Newman trekked across 21 countries and over 15,000 miles despite not liking walking (YouTube/Bethel Museum)

Back in 1987, he explained to PEOPLE why he embarked on the journey to discover whether the world was really as bad as people had painted it.

Speaking of his motive, he said: “[It] was a great curiosity to see what the common people of the world were like. Walking is the best way because you are one-on-one with people.

"We also hear so much about how dangerous the world has become and how it’s falling apart socially, morally, whatever. I had this deep urge to find out if it was really such a terrible place as everybody was saying."

So what was his verdict after completing his trek?

He concluded: "They were totally wrong."

Newman also told The New York Times: "The world is a better place than we give it credit for. There are more good people than bad, even in areas that are dangerous."

Although, while on his trek, he did encounter some horrendous things.

According to PEOPLE, Newman said that 'he was arrested four times during his journey, attacked twice by armed bandits, stoned by students in India (who thought he was English) and beaten by a drunken construction worker in the Australian outback'.

He was also 'accosted by wild boars, bull ants, a poisonous snake, fleas and disgruntled bison'.

Newman later published a book about his travels, entitled 'WorldWalk'.