She has my dream job. Really and truly. She gets to spend the days with her dog in the great outdoors and come home covered in mud to hang out with her books. Sounds perfect to me. 

Nicola Ross, the author of the book Collingwood, the Blue Mountains & Beaver Valley Hikes, followed her passion and became a “professional hiker”.  Combining her love of writing, hiking, and her own community of Caledon, she produced her first hiking guide in 2015 which then launched her hiking guide series Loops & Lattes. Since it was first published in November 2020, we have sold over 800 copies of the wonderful books in this series at our gift store, Coriander Life in downtown Collingwood.

Today, I had the opportunity to chat with Nicola about her book series and the process involved with putting a hiking book together. You can click here to listen to our conversation.

Collingwood, the Blue Mountains & Beaver Valley hikes shares 35 loop trails in the area. Many of these are secret trails that have seen less foot traffic during this busy hiking season throughout Covid. The guide book has excellent maps with clear instructions along with personal tidbits of the author’s hiking observations. All paths have also been tried out by her small army of Beta testers who contributed greatly to the guide. And yes, yours truly has been approved as a Beta tester for Nicola’s next project, a dream to come true on my bucket list!

Nothing nourishes the soul more than a walk through a forest or exploring the path of a river or taking in a countryside view with mud-splattered boots. Those of us who live in Southern Georgian Bay are privileged to have some amazing hiking trails on our very doorstep. And this holds true for many areas of Southern Ontario. Check out the other books in the series: Caledon, Halton, Dufferin, Hamilton, and Wellington, Waterloo & Guelph hikes. 

While all of us have a few favourite footslogs in our catalogue, the books in this series offer us many more hidden gems to discover and explore. And what a treat to have them all published in one convenient and well thought-out place. When I asked Nicola which was her favourite from all of her hikes, the wise author replied “the one that I’m on at the time.” 

Happy hiking, Everyone!