Hiking Honeys find joy, fitness in their travels

HIGH POINT, N.C. (AP) — Don’t be fooled. The Hiking Honeys may be getting older, but just like honey, they’re also very well-preserved.
The Hiking Honeys are a group of 14 High Point women, all in their late 60s or early 70s, who’ve been hiking together for a quarter-century, and they’re still going strong, no matter what circumstances life has thrown at them.
“I think one of the things that has allowed us to be this active in our 60s and 70s is that we’ve been doing this for so long,” says Courtney Best, a longtime member of the group. “We’ve hiked in sleet and snow. We’re not sissies. If we get somewhere and the weather’s bad, we just hike in the rain — we always bring our rain gear with us.”
Twice a year — typically in March and November — the Honeys embark on overnight hiking trips to regional hiking destinations such as Grandfather Mountain, Linville Gorge and Blowing Rock. At other times during the year, various members of the group will hike together at spots closer to home, such as Piedmont Environmental Center, Salem Lake and Hanging Rock State Park.
Most recently, though, the Honeys have just returned from the hiking excursion of a lifetime — a nine-day trip to Ireland.
The Hiking Honeys originated in 1993, when a group of five women went hiking together at Cataloochee in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
“I had gone with the family and hiked a lot prior to that, and I thought it would be really fun if we could get some women to start hiking together,” recalls Barbara Garry, one of the original five hikers. “We started talking about women who liked to hike or walk, and it evolved from there. We’ve been together ever since.”
For 25 years, these women have shared hikes both long and short. They’ve hiked on perfect weather days and on far-from-perfect weather days. They’ve listened to each other’s stories, sharing in the highs and lows of their individual lives. They’ve gotten lost together, finally finding their way out of the woods and onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, where they walked some eight miles — part of it in the rain — just to get back to their cars. They have an annual Christmas dinner together.
And they’ve shared countless laughs together.
“That’s one of the best things about our hiking group,” Best says. “We all come home with sore cheeks, no matter where we’ve been, from laughing so much.”
The highlight of the group’s 25 years together was the recent trip to Ireland, a trip that was some 16 years in the making. The planning began in 2002, when a friend of original group member Debbie Cottam — who works with a travel company called Hidden Ireland Tours — sent Cottam some materials about a hiking trip to Ireland. Cottam had been to Ireland once before, but a hurricane had dampened her trip significantly, so the Hiking Honeys agreed on Ireland as their destination.
“We had been talking about taking a hiking trip as a group in Europe or somewhere exotic, and then Debbie’s friend sent us these materials in 2002,” Best says. “It’s taken us since 2002 to get through with work, marriages, divorces, grandbabies, teenagers, hip replacements, knee replacements, aging parents — to get through life — until we were all able to go. All 14 of us were able to go, which is really unbelievable, because that never happens with our group. I guess no one wanted to miss out on this trip.”
And with good reason. Ireland offers some challenging hiking, but it’s also some of the most beautiful hiking in the world, incorporating such sites as the Beara Peninsula, Killarney National Park and Mt. Eagle, overlooking the Great Blasket Island.
“The longest hike was a 1,600-foot elevation change in a very short period of time,” Best says. “That’s what’s killer. It’s not the elevation change so much as how short the mileage is in that elevation change. The other unique thing is that we were hiking in mountains that were on the coast, so we had this beautiful view of the water almost all the time, which was absolutely gorgeous.”
Garry calls it some of the most difficult hiking she’s ever done, also noting the change in elevation.
“And it was straight up, with no switchbacks, and it was rocky with lots of boulders,” she says. “And we had two women on the trip who’ve had double knee replacements, and one woman with a hip replacement.”
The group wore specially designed Hiking Honeys caps and vests for the trip, and they even made their hiking guides honorary members.
The group did a few touristy things, too: They visited the 15th-century Ross Castle. They attended a cookery school. They enjoyed a whiskey-tasting and several Irish pubs, including The Dingle Pub, where they saw world-champion Irish dancer David Geaney. They saw a Titanic exhibit at Queenstown, which was the ill-fated ocean liner’s last stop before sinking. They enjoyed some shopping, as well.
“The Irish people are so friendly, and the food was wonderful,” Best says. “We couldn’t have asked for a better experience.”
They couldn’t have asked for a better experience, but they’re looking for one. According to Garry, the next big hiking trip may be to France — and they’re hoping this time it won’t take 16 years to plan it.