This really is one of those 'it depends' questions.
It depends on...
- your overall fitness
- your strength and endurance
- the terrain
- the load you will/won't be carrying
- the bike/tyre size/crank length etc.
- your tolerance for having to get off and push (I have no tolerance, I HATE pushing)
People will recommend what they use as it works for them, but you need to work out what works for you.
Go ride your geared bike over some of your normal loops, and do them in one gear only, but try a few different gears over different days to get a feel for what you like and more importantly, what you can handle.
Don't forget fatigue and headwinds can mean a gear that you're OK with 99% of the time can become arduous torture very quickly on a bad day, so in some regards it's better to gear for a bad day than a good one, you can always coast or work on your spinning if you're undergeared, but if you're overgeared there's not much you can do!
FWIW, I live in hilly Devon, and have run 46x17 on a nice light racey SS with 23mm tyres, and 44x17 on a slightly bigger 28/32mm tyred Audax SS bike.
Both are fine on moderately hilly (up to 1000ft/10mile) rides up to 100k, but for hillier or longer rides I sometimes gear down a bit, the extent of which depends more on how much hillier rather than distance as it's the hills that take it out of your more.