Walking the Coltswold Way with My Sis

It's done! The big plan with my sister, Vicki, that I was so afraid I'd jinx by even talking about is now in our rear view. And what a trip it was! Near perfection. I'm so grateful for all the work Vicki put in pre-booking the buses and trains to get us from here to there; I commented several times that we'd surely be dead if we attempted to drive ourselves anywhere. (Have you seen the roundabouts in the UK?!)

But of course "on foot" travel was what we were there for. Vicki came up with this idea when she wanted to go on a hiking adventure with me...without all that backpacking nonsense. The British call this a Walking Holiday and you can book them through several different travel companies. 

We used Mickledore, which I was pleased with despite one encounter I'll expound on in my usual Trail Log below. They were more affordable than I expected, though if you have your mind set on luxury accommodations, this is not the holiday for you. 

For me, a quaint old B & B with a bed and shower is a huge step up from a sleeping bag and tent - even if the place does have sloping floors, crazy steep/skinny stairs, and low hanging beams you are continually bonking your head on. That all just adds to the rustic charm, right? ;)

Maybe it's a bit mushy or sappy to conclude by saying the best part about this whole escapade was getting to experience it together - but it's true! Having a sister that loves you and that you love back is one of the biggest blessings in life, and one that should never be taken for granted. Happy "family bonding" trails! 

Trail Log: (Or a video mash up here if you don't feel like reading.) 

Day One: Travel day, because getting across the pond is no easy task. We stayed at "Premier Inn Heathrow Airport Terminal 4" -- and though it took us a good 40 minutes of walking and train riding, you do get there without ever officially leaving the airport - which is the 5th largest in the world! 

Day Two: A pre-booked bus (that was completely full, so thank you Vicki) took us to Warwick where we planned on visiting the tomb of our distant relative, Warwick's 13th Earl, Richard Beauchamp. After our dad died, we found a book in his belongings that traced our lineage back here; which is the main reason we chose the Coltswold area. (We also toured The Lord Leycester, which I would highly recommend.)

One of the most elaborate tombs you'll find anywhere

The Lord Leycester felt like a movie set

Day Three: Castle day! Because of above stated ancestry, we claimed Warwick Castle as our own...though as hard as I tried to make jokes about getting a family discount, nobody was amused. It was totally worth the entrance fee though - it's like a Castle Disneyland! Maybe a little over the top touristy; but we ate it up - along with all the treats from our high tea splurge. 

Sammie thought booking the tea was worth the extra pounds

Day Four: More public transport to Chipping Campden where we would stay two nights. Ideally you would walk to each night's accommodations, but often this is not possible as many of the towns only have a handful of rooms to offer. Therefore it is common for the travel company to book two nights and then arrange transport back and forth from the trail.

I loved all the old towns, but I think Chipping Campden was my favorite

Day Five: (First hiking day) 10 miles from Chipping Campden to Stanton. A wonderful way to start off our walk - so beautiful. We walked the grounds around Broadway Tower, but didn't do the paid tour. 

I already ordered this as a new canvas for my work kitchen

Day Six: 7 miles from Stanton to the White Hart Inn in Winchcombe. Our shortest day, but whenever you have a mindset of "this will be easy" it always turns out harder than you expected. Stopped mid-day for our first ever Scotch Egg...can't say we were big fans. 

British food is not our fav

Huh?!? Thankfully we never saw him

Day Seven: 11 miles from Winchcombe to Dowdeswell. Our biggest mile day, though the large section of golf course walking was a good distraction. Not like any golf course you'd find in America, that's for sure! (The video explains.) We had to take a cab into Cheltenham for our night's stay, which was a crazy ride and more proof of why trying to drive ourselves would have probably proved deadly. 

Winchcombe...I couldn't get enough of the cute towns!

Day Eight: The best part about using a travel company is they transport all your luggage from place to place for you. Except we spaced and brought our luggage out to the curb while we waited for our cab...can you imagine if it hadn't clicked before he got there and we actually put it all in the car? Thankfully we didn't have to hike these 10 miles with our suitcases in tow, as this was a very hilly day. Met some really nice people on trail, and they even forgave me for convincing them to take a "cheat" to avoid some elevation...which actually resulted in even worse elevation.

Hard to appreciate steepness in a pic; but the railing is so you don't fall to your death ;)

You should follow the signs and not the Alltrails App...well, except for the last mile; which either one will guide you into Birdlip on a very dangerous road. We avoided this by going completely off trail and climbing a dangerous hill instead, ha ha. All around a pick your poison kind of day. 

After the "thrill hills" we were glad to have a real hotel this night...another crazy staircase would have done us in! ;) 

Day Nine: This was stated online as being a 9 mile day, but I'm pretty sure we didn't even hit 7.5. We got very fixated on finding our midday pint, and ended up going on a bit of a goose chase to get to the golf club (yes we were hiking through yet another course) only to find afterward that we would have basically ran into it if we would have just stayed on trail.

"A pint a day keeps the doctor away" was my motto for this trip

Eventually ending our walk in the quaintest town of Painswick at the adorable Saint Ann's B & B really seemed so perfect...until the proprietor made a rude comment about "right leaning" folks while checking us in. This made my sister feel unwelcome and a bit suspicious - so she checked his reviews and found two recent ones from Jewish people who had been refused lodging. We did bring this to the attention of Mickledore, who took it seriously and if proven true said they would stop using this establishment. I know we are living in extremely divisive times, and each side feels strongly they are standing on the higher ground. I personally am not following politics closely because I just can't - but even if I'm more "left leaning," I'm sure I could never grasp how discrimination like this is justified.  

I took a "beautiful church" pic in every single town - very hard to choose just one

Day Ten: The Cotswold Way ends in another 56 miles at the City of Bath, which we really wanted to see but were out of walking time - so we took the train. We spent our first day there pampering ourselves in it's famous ancient waters at the Thermae Bath Spa - an absolute must do if you are going there. (No cameras allowed inside...below is the Roman Baths, which nobody is going in obviously.)

Day Eleven: We had just enough time to tour the Roman Baths then stop for one last tea before catching our bus back to Heathrow where we would fly out the next day. I could write a whole blog entry on my nightmare travel day home of 34 hours - but instead I'll just be leaving some nasty reviews wherever I can about Icelandair.  

Our last tea, right on the famous Pulteney Bridge

One of only four bridges in the world to have shops across it's full span on both sides.

 

Letting Go of Middle Sister

Heidi has her list of volcanoes she wants to summit. It's her thing. I can't really say it's my thing; but I'm thankful it's hers, or we never would have met. (Story here) 

I relate to her desire to have goals - we need them to push us. And getting to put the check mark after an accomplishment is a great feeling. She has supported me in mine, and so I try my best to support her as well. Even though, as I said, I could live without peak bagging.

So I agreed to a trip to summit Middle Sister; BUT if we are driving all the way to Oregon, we have to do some regular hiking too. There are almost endless options in the Three Sisters Wilderness, so it shouldn't be too hard to come up with something, right?

Well, it shouldn't be too hard to pick a flavor at the Baskin-Robbins ice cream counter either, but most the time it is. Therefore, coming up with a plan to see as much as possible within our 6 day time frame was a difficult task.

Our final itinerary will be laid out below, but I'll tell you right here there is one thing we missed...summiting Middle Sister. Is Heidi disappointed? Not really. And honestly, I'm more proud of her for that than any of the goal check marks she's ever made. 

Knowing when the drive to accomplish something is pushing you too hard and making you unwise takes a different kind of strength and courage. Ambition can easily turn into obsession, as the classic tale of Captain Ahab in Moby Dick tries to teach us. Letting go of the need to "win" can be hard, but once you're able, it is also very freeing. (My own lesson here) So whatever your goals in life are, I wish you success...but also the wisdom to realize when they are not serving you well. Happy "sometimes you need to let the whale go" trails! 

TRAIL LOG:

Day 1) It's almost an 8 hour drive for us to get to the town of Sisters, so this was just a travel day. When we summited South Sister in 2023 we flew into Portland, so we were able to do a little hiking on day 1 that time. This time a spot at The Sisters Creekside Campground was in order. It's walking distance into town, so we made the most of it.

"The Barn" is the place to be in town

Day 2) It's a half hour drive to the Tam McArthur trailhead, which is where you start the Broken Top Loop. Thankfully it's not at the Broken Top TH (which it seems like it should be, doesn't it?) because we heard it is not very drive-able. We left poor Reba right there on the side of the road and hoped for the best because there is no parking lot. It's 4.7 miles and about 2K gain to get to Broken Hand, and then you have to decide to go left or right.

Can you see tiny Heidi about to go around Broken Hand?

Left is the standard way...but right looked shorter. Looking down on the snow field from above it looked really easy, but once there I was very uncomfortable with it.

Taking a slide down would not be good

 

Maybe I let my ambition get the best of me, but I followed Heidi across anyway. You keep gaining from here - I'm not sure how much, but we were really over it. Then you see No Name Lake and WOW.

So worth it. Heidi had her heart set on camping here, but WHERE? We passed a couple small spots along the ridge, but there was NO WAY we were walking down to the water and then back up. We half considered being bad and trying to camp within the half mile restriction from the lake, but wisdom prevailed and we kept going down until we found a legal spot. It must have been about 7 miles for the day. 

Day 3) Most people said doing this loop CCW was best, but because we weren't doing the whole loop and avoiding the burn area, we went CW. As we went down, down, down for the day, all I could think of was how miserable it would be to go up - plus we loved seeing No Name Lake from the top and enjoying the views from then on; so I think I'd advise CW even if you are doing the loop.

Anyway, we passed the Green Lakes, then started climbing again for a bit. We decided to go ahead and take the short detour to see Golden Lake, then continued on to camp at Park Meadow. It might have been close to 9 miles total including our detour, and I don't know the elevation number, but it was pretty minimal. 

One of the Green Lakes

 

Day 4) This day started with Heidi's sleeping bag giving itself a bath in the adjacent stream...you'll need to watch my YouTube video to get that story. After that excitement, we made sure to veer off the loop right after leaving camp and took the Green Lakes trail for 5 miles where we would meet Janet at the Pole Creek intersection.

Janet, who lives near Portland, made this whole plan possible because she had Sunday (this day) and Labor Day off. She's crazy enough to want to drive the 3 hours just for one night - plus then drive us back to our car...but we know hiking addicts ignore drive times. Anyway, we were all trying our best to figure out when to be at said trail intersection and hopefully not make the other party wait too long. (Janet had 2 miles to hike on the Pole Creek Trail) Unbelievably, we all arrived at the EXACT same time! Then it was up another 5 miles to stay at Camp Lake, where we were greeted with a naked man doing yoga on the beach. Never a dull moment! 10 miles for the day, with the just over 1k elevation at the end.

Sloth reunion!

Day 5) Thankfully, we had all discussed before bed what the logistics of going for the summit this day was going to look like, and had all agreed it was too big a whale to conquer in our time frame. People have summited from this lake (instead of the more common route you can find on Alltrails) but we learned from our previous trip together just how much our navigational skills are lacking -- it really does add on A LOT of time. Instead we had a leisurely morning, and then did an up and back to Chambers Lakes. 

We were a bit shocked as we looked at the trail leading up there...I know we were all seriously considering backing out...but many people do it WITH FULL PACKS; so we didn't want to be babies.

We gotta go up that?!

Ugh though! Not fun. But the rest of the 2 mile up and back was quite nice, and then it was pack up the stuff and head the 7 miles back to Janet's car. Nine miles total for the day, and then a whole lot of driving to pick up Reba (she was so dirty and not happy - but thankfully still there with no flat!) and then go to Janet's for the night. 

There were several stream crossings

Day 6) Drive the 4 hours home. There is no way I could have driven 8 hours after a full day of hiking - so THANK YOU JANET!!

Here's to not doing Middle Sister!!

A High Note Pivot

 

The art of the pivot is something I am embracing more and more in my life. Instead of seeing the situation that is "not going as planned" as a bad thing, I try to see it as an opportunity for a new plan - possibly even a better plan. 

This is a big help in dealing with disappointments; because let's face it, "not going as planned" happens quite frequently. And of course if we are talking about hiking, the factor that is most likely to wreck any plan is weather. 

And so it was last weekend, when our aspirations of seeing Garibaldi Lake went belly up after the forecast went from "maybe it will be okay" to "hell no." It can be hard to make the pivot when you've struggled and invested in getting competitive permits and also payed for a place to stay in the incredibly overpriced tourist town of Whistler BC.

In fact, because the Whistler RV Park (the only place we could afford) does not offer any sort of refund for your first night's stay, our pivot was going to have to include still going there. There has to be a good day hike close by that would still make the trip to Canada worth it, right? 

Was there ever! Yes, it involved spending even more money because it was right in Whistler and required a lift ticket...but "when in Rome" as they say.   

Thankfully the forecast for Sunday looked far better than Friday/Saturday (when we had our defunct permit) so we were hopeful to maybe stay dry and get to see the views instead of just clouds. 

Heidi taking pics of clouds. Wah wah.

 

The Cloudraker Sky Bridge was super cool though

And not at all scary, IMO

 

Okay, sometimes there's no avoiding disappointment; though honestly it was very minimal. The mountains played peek-a-boo all day, and it was exciting to have them reveal themselves slowly...kind of like a burlesque show where you are wondering if a nipple is going to finally pop out. 

Sadly, we never got the full monty from most the peaks, but it was still an extremely beautiful day. I may even argue that Cheakamus Lake is as vibrant a blue as Garibaldi - but I do hope that someday I'll know for sure. My "things to know" list about the High Note Trail is below if you're thinking about making the comparison yourself. Happy "only slightly disappointing" trails! 

 

THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT HIGH NOTE:

1) As I mentioned, you need the $75 Summer Alpine Experience Pass. There is no cheaper option; but the good news is this gets you unlimited access to all the lifts, including the Peak to Peak. You can buy it online, but you still need to pick up the ticket right there at the Whistler Gondola, so I'm not sure if it saves you that much time. (Though there is a "paid in advance" window, so it might. For us it didn't, as the line was short for any of the windows.) 

Nothing says Whistler like this guy!

2) You need to take the gondola up 20 minutes to the Roundhouse Lodge, and then hike down a bit to the other lift which takes you to the tippy top. The second lift does not open though until 11 am, so we had some time to kill.

Second lift (Peak Express) is short, but kind of thrilling! No kids under a certain height though

We decided to take the Peak to Peak over to Blackcomb Mountain and do the short one mile Alpine Walk Trail. I'm glad we did, because we would have been too pooped if we waited to do it until after doing the High Note. And if I was going to pay $75, you know I HAD to do the Peak to Peak Gondola! It was really amazing and Sammie loved the glass bottom. (See video of the day on my YouTube.) 

3) The High Note Hike is stated as 6.4 miles with 2.5 K in elevation. There are shorter or longer variations you can do though, like the "Half Note" or the "Musical Bumps"

4) There is a little section (after you pass the turn off for the shorter Half Note) I had read about that sounded sketchy, and it probably was at some point. But now it has "reinforcements" and isn't scary at all. 

5) There is a small section near the end where AllTrails wants to take you where you shouldn't be going. There's a big sign at that intersection that is trying to make sure you don't take this stupid detour...we ignored it of course. ;) We made it down okay, but it was dumb. Trust the sign.

Smile! This is marmot central...we must have seen at least 20

6) You know I love ending a hike at a bar, and the Umbrella Bar at the Roundhouse Lodge did not disappoint! (Except for the prices...ugh) There were signs saying it closed at 4:45 pm, but thankfully we walked up there to check it out anyway and found it's open later on the weekends. 

7) You should stop to check out Brandywine Falls which is right off the Hwy near Whistler. It's less than a mile round trip, but most importantly it's FREE PARKING! A miracle! ;)