The Cotswold Way - A Solo Hike By Michael

What is it like to solo hike the Cotswold Way? In this episode we talk with Michael, who recently completed his third solo hike in the United Kingdom, and his 10th long ways hike.  Learn more about his thoughts on the trail, the people he met, and how this trail compares to some of our previous hikes. Plus... we reveal our next destination for this Septmeber!

For more on this hike - visit: https://www.thelongwayspodcast.com/cotswolds

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Transcript

 Hello and welcome to the Long Ways podcast. I'm Devin Windelspecht and I'm Mike Windelspecht, and we are a part of a hiking trio out to hike the great long trails of Europe and the world. Um, we're talking today about the Cotswold Way. So this is another one of Mike's solo hikes, um, that he's been taking around the UK. So he's lucky enough that he gets to do two hikes a year. I unfortunately can only do one. Um, but uh yeah, so, uh, this is, was this your second or third solo hike? This was my third solo hike in, in the UK. Yeah. One a year now. I've done. Yeah. I, you, we have, uh, you can look at our past recordings. We have, uh, one on Hadrian's and then what was the second Saint Cuthbert's. Cuthbert's. Yeah, yeah. Last year. Yeah, about the same time. So this is, uh, that's third, uh, in the UK, which make it your fifth in the UK. Fifth hike in the UK total one, two, three. My fifth UK hike. Yes. I'm becoming pretty good at getting around the UK. Exactly, exactly. Except I was pretty close to Wales, so I'm still not sure. Sometimes I know what people were saying. Wales is still on our list. It is. Everybody told me it's supposed to be beautiful, so I can't wait. So yeah, we're here today to talk about the Cotswold Way. Cotswold Way is one of the, I would say maybe one of the more famous, um, treks throughout the United Kingdom, even though this is a country that has, you know, a lot of, uh, different trekking and a lot of different hikes throughout it. Um, but this is also like when I was looking at photos of this, this is one of the like quintessential British countryside, very Tolkien, very shire. Um, you know, it looks absolutely beautiful. Um, I'm really jealous that I wasn't on this one. Uh, what time of year did you hike this done this again was in April, uh, a little bit later than, um, normally I've done these in, in, in um, early or mid April. This was just a little bit later. So it was right before May, um, probably the last week and a half of April, which appear to make a big difference in some of the weather, um, issues, you know, that are sort of weather, just the weather of the area. Yeah. Yeah. Um, well, I mean, I kind of just want to hear, I mean, on my end, I just, I've heard a little bit about it off podcast, but I want to hear a little bit more about the trail itself. So just tell me a little bit about the trail. What is the trail? Where is it? Um, what is it like to hike it? We'll start from there. This, uh, this trail was really interesting, and it kept coming up on some of my searches and discussions with people about a great solo hike. Um, and it's located a couple hours train ride to the west of, of, um, uh, London. Okay. Kind of a little bit north of Bristol and Bath up in that area. Matter of fact, the trail actually finishes, uh, in, in bath where it comes down through Stroud and into bath. Pretty easy to get to, which I really like. Um, I did not do the entire hike because of time constraints. I had a, I had a week, so I actually asked Max adventures, who we use to build a different one. So I started a Painswick. I did not start at Chipping Campden. As a matter of fact, I'd love to go back and do the top half of this, which is supposed to be really beautiful. Um, it in general, I would say is a fairly, uh, I would say it's a moderate trail, but I use that almost laughing because there's been times when we've been on, people have called things moderate trails and looking straight up and, you know, there's a helicopter replenishing things and other times it's moderate and it's a walk on the beach. So I don't know what these terms even mean, you know, officially, but it was a pretty easy trail to follow. It's unbelievably well marked. Um, large sections of it are actually maintained by basically an organization, a non-profit type of organization that takes care of the path. So really, you know, most times you are walking on really well maintained and also, um, well, uh, the signage was really good except for not paying attention, which I did several times and realized I was nowhere near where I should have been. But the path itself was really pretty easy. Um, a couple quick things about the hike. You know, people often ask me, was it hard some of the climbs out in the morning? Okay. When you climb back onto these ridges, we're usually pretty steep, but really well maintained. Weren't rock scrambles, which were nice. Um, and, and the ascents were fairly short. So you were pretty much done with the ascent in a mile. Yeah, maybe three quarters of a mile. So, you know, you come up out of town, you know how it is the, the, the towns are in the valleys and you come up and you hike along the ridge and you drop back down to the town leader. So I don't think it was very hard. Uh, it was well recognized as a, as a great solo trail in which it was. Yeah. Yeah. And what about the scenery? So like you've, you've now hiked over a lot of different parts of the British Isles. You've been up in Scotland twice. You've kind of been closer to the Scottish English border. Yeah. So what was different about this trail? I mean, I know the the background behind you, uh, is, uh, from the trail itself. Yeah. So what, what was it like? Like just scenery wise hiking this trail. What were the towns like? What was the scenery like? It was absolutely beautiful and for a lot of reasons. Once again, I was a little bit further on in the spring. So that means that the trees had leaves on them. This year, when I hiked Hadrian's Rights, it was still a little early for trees to have have their leaves in April. And, you know, I like Cuthbert's. It was kind of half, half and half, you know, smaller trees were in, but it was really beautiful because the trees were in. And a lot there's a lot of flowers, for example, almost. I have these beautiful pictures of you walking this forest. It was like something out of a Tolkien novel. And there's nothing of bluebells in this, you know, with the sunlight coming through and it seems like this. Um, so it was really, you know, the scenery was amazing. You did. There were a couple different aspects to the, to the hikes, uh, when you were up and you got up along the ridges and you were heading, um, in the beginning, you were heading along a series of beacons, which is funny. You mentioned, you know, this whole thing of, you know, the Tolkien like, it almost felt like, you know, like it's like the beacons of Minas Tirith, you know, and, you know, I, I started at Painswick Beacon. I actually had a zero day to start, actually hiked north to pick up five miles of the trail and then came back down and, you know, and then the Haresfield beacon and there's a couple others, and you kind of hike between these beacons where they used to basically set fires to, to bring people into this area. Very rolling. Um, um, not a lot of up and down though, but a very nice rolling hills, you know, easy, easy ups and downs, beautiful forest. It's part of a natural area of along the west coast. And I'll grab the name of that and put it into our, onto our web page. Uh, so there's a lot, it's a heavily forested area too. Mhm. Uh, what I really enjoyed, though, I'll be honest with you, was, uh, first of all, some of the small towns I were in were absolutely, just for lack of a better word, precious little towns. They were just really, it just felt like you were, you were just strolling into like the sixteen hundreds, you know, and these. Yeah. And the farms, it was the farms, which were amazing. You know, you're walking past farms which have been there for three, four hundred years. Mhm. You know, easy, you know, um, uh, and just the, the picturesque water moving past them and, you know, and of course it is England in the UK. So everybody has these gorgeous gardens and they're all putting those in there. So it's just so many times I would just actually just sit on a wall and take a break and just stare at people's farms and, you know, and it was really nice. It was definitely was definitely a farm area. That area has a lot of there's a lot of conflict right now because people are coming in and a lot of hobby farms and they're kind of. And so the prices are going up. And so therefore, the traditional farms are leaving. But one of the things I really enjoyed too, was a couple of times I came across signs talking about how this area was heavily farmed by the Romans, which places them back once again, this connection back back to Hadrian's right, because you had to feed people up in Hadrian's and you're wondering, how did you do that? Because that area is very barren. Yeah, most of it. And it's because they were farming way back here. So they have like, you know, this was a Roman farmhouse or, or where we believe there was a Roman farmhouse. There's obviously nothing left of those. The towns were simply amazing. Um, I stayed in anything from very, very small places, you know, where it's just basically a bed and breakfast and a pub, as you and I are used to many times. And then sometimes I was actually in some larger, um, larger towns such as Dursley. Uh, was actually a pretty decent sized, uh, town I was in. So there was, you're kind of hiking down through these different either small towns or into these small areas with bed and breakfasts. It's really, really amazing. Well, let me ask you, before we get into some bigger questions, let me ask you a couple of quick fire questions. I think, um, one of which is, uh, best day on the trail. Uh, definitely. I think the best day on the trail was definitely when I was walking from a town called, uh, Wootton under edge. Okay. And I know I'm mispronouncing that. So if you're listening in the UK. I tried. I tried listening when you told me okay, and I kept mispronouncing it, and I was actually walking to old Sodbury and this was one of my favourite parts of the trail. It was just really very, just beautiful, a beautiful day. As you climbed out, um, and I lots of water and you walk past these really majestic farms and that day just seemed like one after the other. Mhm. Bang, bang, bang. Until you kind of headed back down into old Salisbury. But I really enjoyed that day the most. It was also one of the longer days for me, um, on the trail, but it was so beautiful. I didn't even notice it. It was fourteen miles. It was just. Yeah. Next thing you know, I was like, I'm like two miles from the end. Yeah. How did that happen? Right. So so that was probably my favorite, my favorite day. Uh, also the places, a couple of the bed and breakfasts I stayed were in those types of small towns. And Wootton was kind of a neat little town. It's hard to explain it. Yeah. Uh, well, second rapid fire question. What was the worst day on the on the trail? Well, the worst day of the trail actually happened in in cold, cold Ashton. Okay. Catch a cab back into bath. So, you know, sometimes you have to go into bath. They bring you out the next day to finish. It's just the way that there's no lodging in cold Ashton. And they sent my cab to Cold Ashton. Oh, it seems that there. And they are not near each other. Oh, no. So by the time I figured out where my ride was, he was over an hour and a half away and had to come get me because he couldn't. He couldn't take another fare until he cleared the one he was in. Oh my God. And he was sitting by the community center in cold Ashton. Okay. And he goes, I'm sitting by the community center. I said, you I'm in the middle of nowhere in this community. I said, there's nothing here. You can't possibly be here. And finally we figured it out. I sent him a pin and that was it was a long day. I was ridiculously tired. Yeah. I really just wanted to go get some beer. Okay. And some food. And maybe lay down and get in the bath. And, uh, so that was the. That's about as bad as it gets. It did not rain once. That's nice. Especially for UK, right? Yeah, yeah. And you know nothing and I it was good for me. Not great for the farmers. But they were you know. But it was a there was no bad weather days. Question number three. Where would you rate this trail? So we've done you've done now we've done eight. So you've done close to ten or eleven trails this year. Eleven. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So picture a scale of one to eleven. Where does this fall on difficulty. Oh, uh difficulty just because of some of those little sections. Maybe around a maybe let's just put, you know, like on a five like, like difficulty and only for short periods. It really wasn't difficult. It just, there were some pretty steep ascents out that were pretty vertical and, um, you know, but not as bad as, say, Slovenia or even parts of Turkey where we really, you know, we walked out and looked up and, you know, there's Mount Moses. Yeah, exactly. Okay. We're going to, we're going to go over the top of it, you know, type of thing. So probably probably difficulty fifth, maybe sixth. It was it was tough. Yeah. And I think my, my last question before we get into some of our bigger ones is what, um, what trail that we've hiked before, maybe because of scenery, because of how the trail was laid out. Is this one most similar to for me, it was very similar to Cuthbert's. Okay. But for us, okay. For us, I would say that it was it was probably, although the topography was different, I'm talking about the general idea behind what we're doing on the trail very close to the road of Vincentina. Okay. The fact that it was very much town to town, and you were along these very scenic areas that were very, very rural. And then we come into some place, a small place from with regards to, um, you know, like the, the geography of the area and things like that, probably closer to like the area between Loch Lomond and before you truly started to climb up into the highlands of Scotland. Scottish lowlands. Kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. You're in that lowlands area. Um, you know, a few more trees in this area, but so, so probably a combination if you took the two of them and mashed them together. Interesting. Well, I do want to take a step back here. You know, one of the there's two things here. This is your third solo hike. Mhm. But also like when we first started hiking, this was was almost eight or nine years ago now. Like, so it's been it's almost a decade of us doing this, which is super cool. But, you know, um, I was also, I'm already feeling, you know, it in my bones a little bit now thirty when I start off at twenty two doing this. Exactly. I couldn't catch you at twenty two. You're exactly. So I think like, you know, you're a solo hiker in your sixties, you know. What would you what advice would you give for other people who are. So I feel like, you know, the solo hikes you. Do you specifically find them as stuff that you feel like you can tackle solo? Like some of the longer ones we do, we do them as a group for a reason. Yeah. Um, and so I think, you know, as someone, you know, someone is listening to this and they're also like maybe in their late fifties or their 60s and they want to do a solo hike like this. What, what, what, what advice would you give them? That's a really great question. And I think that really what I would say to them is, first of all, you can do it. Okay. You pick the right trail. Okay. And be methodical on, you know, your planning. Because the one nice thing about traveling with the three of us, especially when we hit some of our technical trails, is I can rely upon you and Eric, and we kind of have this neat team of how we do things. You know, I read the map, you correct me on the map, you know, Eric deals with, you know, the photography, but we're also checking each other like, you know, should we have gone that way? So yeah, so it really comes down to a more of a, of a planning and to plan a route that, to be honest with you, you have access. If something goes wrong, you don't want to have to be airlifted out. And not that anything did. But I was never more than a couple miles from a town, you know, or. and a trail which is fairly well traveled. It wasn't West. You know, the great Glen way, where sometimes we didn't see anybody the entire day. So something happened to us. We had to rely upon each other. Um, I think the other thing is to prepare yourself for it, you know, to get into if you haven't done for anybody, if you haven't done the long hikes, you know, the ten or fifteen miles. And I know there's people who were there were people on that trail who are doing twenty miles and twenty five miles. I just I don't know how you enjoy yourself. Trying to plod through the trail of that fast is to really kind of build yourself up. And it's a mental game of, you know, if you don't think you can do a ten at ten mile hike, but you can, you can do a five mile hike, it's just two five mile hikes. Mhm. You do one in the morning and one in the afternoon. It's just that. But there's a mentality. It's a mindset. The other thing that I did was I kept a notebook with me, first of all to record important things that happened on the trail, but also things I had to do that day to plan forward to two or three days. As you know, when we're hiking these, sometimes you have to contact for transportation two or three days in advance to verify meals, right? Order lunches and stuff. And so I just, I, I planned all that out on Tuesday, call these people and do this. Um, other than that really is to also take things at your own pace. You're not, you're not speed hiking this, you're not hiking with, you know, I hiked with a, saw a couple people a couple of times, but a couple of times I really just slowed myself down. I'm like, I don't have to be anywhere till five o'clock today. Right? And I that means literally, I can hike this at one mile an hour, which is, which is hard, which is usually usually reserved for a hard trail. So I hike it at two miles an hour. I would stop, take a decent break. Yeah, beautiful views and just sit there and talk to a few people walking by and then just kind of get up and do another three miles and you can do it. It's just a little bit harder. Um, and you gotta, you gotta plan it in advance. Mhm. You know, plan what each day is going to be. What kind of you were talking about, like meeting people on the trail, you know, always, I think like there's always two kind of sides to the trail. There's the actual nature of the trail itself. And there's also like the people you meet along the way. So did we meet any characters on this trail? I met characters, okay. But here's the thing. They were inspirational characters I met. Basically, I met a number of different people. Okay. Um, from various areas, a number of Americans. Okay. Uh, there were some, some Canadians too. Um, every once in a while we came across, there was, there was a series of, of, of guys who were there from Norway, which I crossed back and forth. But the funny thing was, was there were three groups that I kept crossing back and forth with who were, who were older than me. Okay, probably in their seventies. Okay. Um, and I don't know how, but every time I turned around, they were ahead of me. Okay. Um, and they, they were not speed hikers, but they were just, like I said, they were taking their time and being able to sit with them and talk with them about some of the trails, um, are great. Uh, one of the things I really enjoyed about some of the people was. If. This is why I like staying in the Airbnbs right in the in the small bed and breakfast, you know, you go down to common area. There's other hikers there. Yeah. And so I kept running into this woman named Sarah from New Hampshire, and she's been hiking. She's also done a lot of solo hikes and group hikes and things along the lines. So that was, you know, just talk to them about some of the trails we've done together. So the one, the one of the one of the guys I met a couple, uh, Sam and Kyle, uh, they, they were hiking and come to find out the last day, you know, I find out that Sam, uh, Sam is a is a hiker. Okay. And and Kyle's his wife, right? Mhm. And so, and they're really cool people. He's not just a hiker. He's a painter. Mhm. And I said, oh, a friend of mine's a painter. And we talk for a moment, and he started showing me his painters know this guy's a painter. Yeah. Like he can paint what's behind you. Yeah, it would look like that, you know? And, uh, it was just amazing to, uh, to meet him and and exposure. And then another couple I met. They were from Maine, pretty close to places we hiked in Maine. Mhm. You know, near Bar Harbor and Acadia. And they were they were hiking. This is going to be their last probably long distance hike. They were going to take, you know, a little bit older. Right. And they were getting ready to go, uh, spend a couple more weeks in England. They were taking the Queen Mary back across. Oh that's cool. South Hampton, New Hampshire. Right. So yeah, it just, you know, the stories, the stories of meeting some of these people, um, met some really cool local people. Mhm. Uh, lots of, uh, mostly farmers who are just out in their land, as in walking through its public trails in England. You know how it works, you know, basically have a right of way to go through their property as long as you don't destroy things. Yep. And then most of the time they would come out, they see me, they'd stop and get off and come talk to me for a few moments. And yeah, you know, chat and just, just amazing stories of the land. You know, I'm trying to write this stuff down and get these people's names and everything, you know, and it's just it. So those are like, the characters were really the other hikers and mostly just in. They were inspirational. They were just really great people to to interact with. I enjoyed seeing him on the trail, not, you know, dreading, oh gosh, you know, how am I going to slow down enough so I don't, you know, run into these people or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, you talked about there's a lot of Americans on the trail, a lot of Canadians. Um, you know, we've been hiking now again for eight or nine years now, um, across let's say three administrations and two presidents. Yeah. And the, you know, we won't get political on this show, but, you know, there's, there is some questions about how Americans are perceived overseas, especially with some tensions that are happening diplomatically, let's put it that way, between, you know, European countries and and the United States right now. And so I think, you know, sometimes people think that, like if they go overseas, uh, to the UK or to, you know, France or Germany, that, um, there's going to be some pushback from being American. So I want to hear your perspectives of how that was in the UK this time. You know, Devin, it pretty much paralleled what you and I have seen now for eight years. You know, that we've been, you know, in, in, in Turkey or Turkey, right. And, and, and, uh, you know, and very different culture and just been openly welcomed as being, as being hikers, you know, and we've been in Portugal and obviously, you know, uh, all over England and, you know, there's, I have a funny story about this just to kind of show it, you know, he's, I, I stopped and I was talking to a, I was talking to this one, uh, guy in the field, uh, and he said he stopped me. He goes, are you American or Canadian? And I said, well, I really like to say Canadian. Yeah, right. He just laughed. He goes, he goes, well, you know, the problem with you Yanks are. And I was like, oh, okay. Well, you know, you can go ahead and say it. He goes, you know, he's got to one up us, don't you? He goes, no, he goes, we have this really bad government right now. But no, you gotta go. It was just like this laughing moment. It's just very, very much. And then we switch. We quickly just dropped it and talked about the trail. Nobody brought anything up. They, you know, they the farmers didn't care or didn't bring it up. And I, and I didn't, you know, say anything about it. And so I think that the people respect the fact that you're there to see their country. Mhm. It's, you know, we're the people were there. We're there. And, and to see their country and experience their country. And of course, a lot of these things are tourist based areas, right? So, you know, they're, they're glad to see, you know, us in. But there was a large number of Americans and it was just very wasn't a big deal. It just was everything was really relaxed and very respectful and, but just more just friendly. Yeah, it was just like, welcome to my home. And you know, what can I help you with? And nobody asked, you know, like, you know, what did you do? Or how do you know what's going on with this? It just never really came up. I can't remember anybody bringing up a certain thing. Like, why did why did your government do this? Yeah, I don't know. I'm not in the government. Yeah. So it's really they're very friendly, but the same thing you and I have seen every single place we've been. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, um, one of the things I've also realized from, you know, doing some traveling and how I feel like when you're doing these hikes, you are, you're off the main tourist paths a lot. And so you're kind of sometimes people in these places. I'm thinking about Portugal. I'm thinking about Turkey. The, um, the only time they, you know, meet Americans sometimes is, is the hikers. Yeah. And, um, that's, that's a really unique opportunity. Um, because one, you can be kind of representative of your country, but the other side is that you don't, the people who have the preconceived notions maybe of like the big tourist crowds or like that kind of stuff. Yeah. Um, they, there's a lot more opportunity for people to meet you one on one when you're on the trail because you're, they know you're here to go see their country and to see it in a slow way and be respectful of it. Um, and I think that's always been like one of my favorite parts of the trail is that people are just really willing to meet you where you are on the trail. I was walking one day through this beautiful wooded area once again not too far outside of Dursley, and there was this older lady walking her dog. And I'm still so amazed. I'm like, how did you get your dog up here? Yeah, yeah, I just struggled to get up here. But she must have lived in the area and I was walking on the trail and she just stopped me and was just chatting for a minute. She goes, you know, here's what you want to do. She goes, this next mile is pretty boring. And just walk over here and like, walk down this, this road over here and you got some beautiful views off to off to the east, you know, looking. And it was just really sweet of her to take her time and just tell me, you know, there's a different way to do this. You know, you can come see it. And, uh, and of course, if you're in the bigger cities in bath, you know, I mean, being a solo hiker and things I, I stayed out of, you know, big bars or things like that, you know, I just, you know, we just go to the pub and I'd have something to eat and drink and head home and back to the room. So that's part of traveling by yourself as well. Don't put yourself in situations. But I never saw one. Yeah. And again, I've never. All these. I don't remember a single time that we've had a. You know, somebody's been upset with us because we're where we came from. Yeah. Well, I mean, kind of switching gears a little bit, um, where, you know, you're, you're still doing solo hikes and you're going to continue doing solo hikes. Are you going to keep doing them in the UK? You think, are you thinking somewhere else. So there's there's a couple in the UK I'd like to do. First of all, I think I'd like to go back and finish the north part of this trail. Um at the area between Chipping Campden, Camden, Camden. Camden. Okay. And and Painswick is supposed to be really, uh, one of the most beautiful parts of the trail, which amazes me because the part I was in was simply gorgeous. Right? Yeah. So that would actually turn it back. If you did the entire thing again, it would drive it back to probably being a ten day hike. You know, I just didn't have the time for it this time. And so, um, and I still have this idea, although it'll never happen once of doing the coast to coast. It is supposed to be challenging. Some of the areas are supposed to be rough to get through, but I'd have to do it over two seasons. But be honest with you. You know, one of the things I've really thought very strongly about is I'd like to go back to, to Ireland. And the reason why I picked those countries is relatively easy to get their languages. Language is not an issue. Yeah, right. I know how to I know the transportation systems, but also maybe going back and looking at some of the trails that I just like the Dingle way, which I didn't finish because of my knees and just saying, okay, I'm not sure I'd solo it or maybe just do portions of it, maybe half the dingle. Um, but also I think I might start looking maybe into Italy, some of the trails into Italy. Yeah. The coast, uh, would be great. Uh, I still have this idea of maybe even going to Newfoundland and doing it. There's a couple trails up in that area. Could be fun to hike. Um, I was, I lived in Iceland for a little bit, so going to Iceland would just be, you know, great. Although the hiking you and I have talked about this, it's very different, right? It's more of a car hike, car hike, car hike than a, than a true like. So I think I'm going to keep doing it. I I don't know what I'm gonna do for next year, but I gotta think about it. We have we have a a wee hike ahead of us before a little bit. Do we want to do we want to tell people what we're doing? Sure. Go ahead and let them know. Yeah. So we're doing the King Ludwig way, King Ludwig way. Um, and this is in Bavaria, Germany. Um, so this is going to be a good, another like good, like seven to eight day hike. Yep. Um, and we were between a couple of trails this time. You know, sometimes when we're looking at the trails, we kind of have like a firm idea of what we're going to do next. And I think after, you know, going back to Scotland, I think we were kind of milling around for a couple options. And we realized, one, we hadn't really done Germany before. Right. Um, and we were between a couple, there was like a trail that was like more along the Rhine River. There was one that was more up in like the proper Alps of Bavaria. And so we kind of like took like a middle ground between those two. And this one is following some ancient castle towns along the, um, the edge of the Alps, at the edge of the Bavarian Alps. Yeah. So we're not going to be fully hiking the mountains themselves. We've done. We've done our mountain trails, we've done Mont Blanc, we've done Slovenia. We know what the Alps are like. We've hiked the Alps before. Yeah. So this is going to go back. But yeah. Yeah. Not that this one is going to be more the foothills of the Alps. Um, and, but I think for us, it's going to be really interesting because we're going to be in Bavaria, we're going to be in Germany. We've never done Germany before. Um, and um, yeah, it's going to be a really good hike. So that will be this September coming up. Mhm. Um, and so that's our next big hike. But I think we're gonna get a few more podcasts, um, between now and then. So please keep an eye out and, um, you know, the one dad that I want to be doing and if I can get on one of the your solo hikes, I will make it a dual hike is I've been really thinking about like the Mount Snowdon area in Wales. I heard that was really pretty. So this came up several times. That's an absolute hike. And these are these are mostly solo hikes because I just have the ability to do that via being an author. I can decide what I'm going to go do things in. April is a great time for me to do things. Uh, and it's not highly it's not very busy yet in, in the UK. Yeah, that area is supposed to be absolutely gorgeous to do, you know, um, there's also a trail, a trail in Ireland up by where you used to be. Yeah. And there's a couple up there. Yeah. A couple that connects to very northern coast of Ireland, which I didn't know. There were longer trails up there, but there's some new or pieced together like a sixty seventy mile up there in that area too near uh, Kings was one with the Kings landing the no, no, that's Game of Thrones. Um, they did film a lot of Game of Thrones there. Um, I think I hiked part of this one way back when, when I used to live in Northern Ireland. Um, there's something called, I think the, I want to say it's the Giant's Causeway hike. It's not the Giant's Causeway itself, but it follows the north coast of, of Northern Ireland, which is one of the most beautiful places I've ever lived. Behind me on my thing. That's actually Dingle way. Yep. But if you believe it, actually, I think Northern Ireland is prettier, at least the northern coast than this. Yeah. So um, so that would be another fun one. Fun one to do as well. Uh, yeah. This one, this one. This one was worth it. Uh, it was worth going back and hiking the northern part and then even following it down, you know, down south, past Dursley, uh, past Stroud and coming into some of those lower areas. You don't have to go all the way to bath. Although bath was, bath was a great place to end a hike. Yeah. What a gorgeous city. Uh, so old. Everything is just very old. And, uh, just every time you turn around, you're coming across cemeteries with, you know, from the fourteen and fifteen hundreds. Um, I mean, it goes all back to Roman times. That's where the name comes from. Yeah. So yeah, they still have the baths, although they're very commercialized now, but yeah. Well, I think that's us for today. So, um, once again, I'm Devin Windelspecht and I'm Mike Windelspecht. And this is a long ways podcast. Thank you for listening. Thank you.