10 years in the making

Editor's note: This piece is being republished with permission from the Iowa Falls Times-Citizen.

Rita Wohlert is the daughter of E.P and Nellie Koehnecke, while Shelley Brinkert-Hjelm is the daughter of Ed and Florence Brinkert. The friends grew up in the Hartley area and graduated from high school as members of the Class of 1967.

Wohlert lives in Iowa Falls, while Brinkert-Hjelm resides on a farm northeast of Hartley. Brinkert-Hjelm said the trip to England was a unique experience.

"It was great and it was a blast," she said. "It was absolutely beautiful there."

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Iowa Falls resident Rita Wohlert and her friend Shelley Brinkert-Hjelm recently traveled to Cotswold Way in England, a trip they have been planning for quite some time.

"This is a trip my friend and I wanted to do for 10 years," Wohlert said. "I'm 75 and she's 74, and we've been friends since kindergarten."

Wohlert and Brinkert-Hjelm are originally from Hartley and attended school through high school together, then parted ways.

"But we still kept in touch, and we both like to travel, so I asked her when she'd like to do this trip," she said.

They have also traveled together many times before. However, a few hurdles kept setting the date of this trip back: Brinkert-Hjelm raises Arabian horses and can only travel when it's not foaling season, and Wohlert had a couple of bouts with cancer. On top of that, she had fallen and broken her wrist in May, but the cast came off right before their trip.

"Finally, this summer we decided to go," she said. "And June is supposed to be the perfect weather in the Cotswolds."

The trip requires a lot of walking and is best when not done during the rainy season, Wohlert said, so the friends selected June. However, prior to this Wohlert suffered from both stomach and thyroid cancer.

"I had stomach cancer 10 years ago, and thyroid cancer three years ago," Wohlert said, noting that she wanted to make sure she was healed and well enough to travel.

Then, at the start of the trip, Brinkert-Hjelm dealt with flooding issues at her condo at Okoboji, where she lost a dock.

"We were able to compartmentalize it, and just say, 'there's nothing you can do about it,' " Wohlert said.

So, on June 17, they left for England.

Cotswold Way is a private walking path that people are allowed to travel over 104 miles through the English countryside, and the friends booked their trip through Macs Travel, who handled their luggage transfers, but not the guided tour.

"You meander through people's private land, and it's known for its limestone hedges. The hedges are all free-standing and there's nothing to hold them together. They are actually a work of art," Wohlert said, noting that there are 4,000 miles of these dry walls in the Cotswolds, but the path is only 104 miles.

"We did not have a guided tour," she said. "We have an app on our phone which gave us GPS, but we did not have a guided tour, we were totally on our own."

The duo first flew into London and stayed at a hotel for three days near the central part of the city. They used the app called Rome2Rio, which helped them with directions around the city. But even with that, there were challenges.

"We looked like deer in the headlights," Wohlert said, noting that thankfully the locals were very friendly and helpful. "They were just as curious about us as we were them."

The visited many of the London sights like old pubs, St. Paul's Cathedral and the Tower of London. They traveled by the underground rapid transit system the Tube, as well as the hop-on, hop-off bus. They also visited the Charles Dickens Museum and Paddington Station.

After three days of sightseeing, they continued on to Chipping Campden of Gloucestershire in the Cotswold district where they stayed at the 450-year-old Volunteer Inn. The next day they started on Cotswold Way.

"It was kind of like a dream and I couldn't believe we were actually there," Wohlert said.

The first day they hiked for 10 miles past cottages, through fields of livestock, forests, rocky fields and made it to the 16th Century Broadway Hotel in Broadway, Cotswold. They hiked the next day about nine miles to Winchcombe.

"There are no Walmarts, there are no big box stores, they are all small in-keepers," she said. "And they couldn't be kinder. The people are just so laid back."

They stayed at the Lion Inn and it was fabulous, she said. The total mileage they hiked on Cotswold Way was 32 miles, in different daily increments. The last day was "really tough," Wohlert said, because they traveled 12 miles in 89-degree temperatures.

After they left the Cotswolds, they took the train back to Paddington Station and headed to the airport.

"It was what we wanted to do, and we were very fortunate," Wohlert said. "People were kind, we didn't have any big hurdles."

Wohlert has traveled extensively, as she was previously employed at First American Bank in Webster City as their travel director for their bank club, but traveling with her best friend made this trip more special.

"I feel very blessed every day that we could do that and fulfill this dream," Wohlert said. "It was a dream to do this. This was on my bucket list and if you dare to dream, you can do it."