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FieldHouse Folks In The Field

Uncategorized  |  2 weeks ago

Our Team Walks These Routes Every Year

There’s a version of this business where trips get planned from a desk, built off supplier reports, and updated when someone complains. Plenty of operators run that way, and their brochures look great. But we’ve never been able to do it. This year, the people who plan, book and answer the phone here were on the Kumano Kodo in Japan, the James Herriot Way in Yorkshire, the Cotswold Way, Tour du Mont Blanc, and the Haute Route from Chamonix to Zermatt. The fall before that, three of us walked Alta Via 1 through the Dolomites. Some of it was work. Most of it was the reason we do the work.

Here’s where we’ve been and where we’re headed before the year is out.

Why we keep going out

Change is the one constant in the world and we’ve learned over the years that route knowledge has a shelf life. Innkeepers retire and sell to someone whose breakfast starts an hour later. A footbridge washes out, and the detour adds ninety minutes to a day we’ve described as easy. A pub that made the ideal halfway lunch stop cuts its Tuesday hours.

These aren’t things we learn through data analysis or supplier emails; we learn them through our own trial and error. When one of us is standing there at 1 pm, hungry, in front of a locked door.

Most operators who scout a route do so only once, but our goal is to know these trails like the backs of our hands, to navigate pitfalls in our heads, so that when we get a call about the unexpected, we can close our eyes and envision a workaround. Julie guided the Kumano Kodo in May and guides it again in October, the same route twice in a year. Walking them repeatedly is the only way the details stay true so we can give the most up to date information and feel confident sending fellow adventurers on their own journeys.

Jenna Luberto, Owner/Operator, on why FieldHouse Adventures insists on their team walking routes themselves when most operators don’t: “I wholeheartedly believe in the power of connecting with nature and disconnecting from the hustle and bustle of our busy world. Movement in nature is a necessity for everyone’s physical, mental and emotional health and taking care of that is the number one priority in life, in my opinion. If we can help people experience what we experience when we walk the trail, then our mission has been accomplished.”

The other reason is plainer. We like walking. Thirty-seven years ago this company was started by people who believed that a long day on foot, ending at a table with others who walked the same miles, was worth building a business around. That belief hasn’t needed revising.

Japan: Julie guided the Kumano Kodo

Guided, May 10 – 23, 2026

Julie founded this company thirty-seven years ago and still takes groups out herself. This spring she guided our Kumano Kodo trip across Japan’s Kii Peninsula, on pilgrimage routes people have been walking for more than a thousand years.

The Kumano Kodo explains slow travel better than any brochure copy could. Forest paths through cedar and moss, linking shrines, mountain villages, and onsen towns, walked with the same slow pace and intentionality that made them sacred in the first place. For over a thousand years, people have walked these same paths to the Kumano Sanzan, the three grand shrines where Shinto and Buddhist practice have long blended into one another, seeking purification and renewal with each step. This trip is an immersion in that same living tradition, one of only two pilgrimage routes in the world recognized by UNESCO alongside Spain’s Camino de Santiago.

Yorkshire: Nancy on the James Herriot Way

Guided, May 22–29, 2026

Nancy handles much of our customer service in the office; she’s the person on the other end of the line when you call us, and this spring she crossed the pond to walk the James Herriot Way with her brother and Di Brooksbank, who has guided for us for years. Yorkshire gave them a rare week: hot, dry and long, sun stretching over green fields and stone walls running to the horizon in every direction. Their route ran along meandering rivers, up onto high windy moorland and past waterfalls tumbling into the dales, with fish and chips and cold pints waiting on the hot afternoons. What stood out to Nancy, beyond the pastoral beauty of the James Herriot Way, were the connections she made with others, traveling in a smaller group to allow her to immerse herself fully in a new culture.

We asked Nancy for a few moments that she keeps coming back to and what is something she’d tell a traveler before they set out on a similar journey. “There were many moments on the James Herriot Way when I found myself in awe of the scenery, especially under the clear, bright skies we were fortunate to have on this particular trip. But my fondest memories are of the unexpected encounters we had with local people along the way. Hearing their stories and learning more about their way of life was truly enlightening and added a special dimension to the journey. For anyone considering a similar trip, I would recommend being as prepared as possible physically. Take the time beforehand to train for the level of activity involved – it will make for a much more enjoyable and rewarding experience.“

England and the Alps: Diane on the Cotswold Way and Tour du Mont Blanc

Cotswold Way Guided, June 2 – June 12, 2026   ·  Tour du Mont Blanc Self-Guided, August 20 – September 1, 2026

Two routes in one year, one guided and one self-guided, make Diane one of the most useful person on this page.

In the office, she runs our trips, arranging the lodging, the transfers, and the general order of the days. The Cotswold Way is one of our gentler trips, with honey-colored villages, fields of sheep, church towers on the skyline, and footpaths that have been walked so well that they blend into the environment, becoming a part of the landscape. In contrast, Tour du Mont Blanc sits at the other end of the scale, a circuit of the highest massif in the Alps, with the passes and elevation to prove it. In walking the TMB on a self-guided tour, Diane was able to rewrite what needed rewriting: route notes, transfer information, all the technical information to guide others, and also the gut instinct that comes with knowing how these trails feel under our feet: how far to push, when to rest, what to hold your breath for and what to let go.

The Alps: Jenna on the Haute Route

Self-guided — July 28 – August 3, 2026

The Haute Route is the one people work up to. It runs between two of the most recognizable mountains in Europe, and its strenuous ascents and dramatic landscape make you earn every view: meltwater streams, wind-swept ridges, and huts where a cold beer and a welcome lunch wait at the end of a long climb.

Jenna is our co-owner and, perhaps a little to her chagrin, she’s discovered that running a walking company leaves less time for walking than you’d expect. She recently got to spend twelve days hiking the Haute Route this summer with her husband, nine of them on the trail from Chamonix to Zermatt. The experience brought her some much-needed grounding even as it simultaneously lifted her spirits and stoked her sense of adventure.

We asked Jenna what the best moment of the nine days on the Haute Route was and what doing it self-guided offered her that was unique. “It is hard to choose just one moment, as I was constantly feeling grateful throughout the entire journey. Reconnecting with myself and my sense of adventure around every corner, pushing through the hard parts and feeling proud and accomplished in myself and my body at the end of each day was so rewarding. I felt so lucky to wake up and have my only job for the day to be to get from point A to point B. On a self-guided trip it felt less like a group trip and more like an adult scavenger hunt, following trail notes and maps to find our way to the next destination. It was so fun and so fulfilling in so many ways.”

The Dolomites, the fall before

Alta Via 1, guided, September 12– September 20, 2025

Erin, Marissa, and Jenna took the guided Alta Via 1 last September, the high traverse beneath the pale limestone towers that make the Dolomites so unique to the Alps.

Erin handles sales and client relations, so she’s the one who talks people through choosing a destination that’s the right fit for them. Marissa works in our back office and helps with administrative work. We believe so firmly that you have to love these trips in order to sell them, to have a sense of intention for each of our routes, and to have that same care for everyone who inquires about traveling with us. Having the first hand experience helps us know what we are offering, what might be the right fit for others, or what might be next on the horizon when they return home from a successful journey.

Their week in the Dolomites ran from September 12–20, very similar to our upcoming 2027 guided departure. If you want to know what mid-September looks like above the tree line, they can tell you precisely.

What ends up in the trip notes

Every one of these walks produces a list.

Nancy’s from Yorkshire goes into next year’s notes. Diane’s two routes changed our self-guided instructions, the transfer details and the packing guidance we send before you go. Julie came back from Japan knowing which inn to hold again and which day runs longer on the ground than it looks on paper.

So much of this work happens behind the scenes, but you can feel the impact on your trip when the pacing is right, lunch is where we said it would be, and the innkeeper knows your name because we’ve been sending people to her for years. This sense of familiarity with our routes, a familiarity that adapts year over year, lets us offer you trips that we are confident you’ll enjoy because we do too.

Where we are this fall

None of this stops when summer ends.

Julie guides our Dordogne trip September 20–27, then turns around and guides the Kumano Kodo again October 18–31. In between, Erin and Jenna fly out on October 1 for our Croatia departure to see if this route might be the right fit for families who want to walk trails together. They’ll come home with their honest opinions, as mothers and hikers, and if the answer is yes, you’ll see Croatia on the calendar in a version built for three generations at once.

Come with us in 2027

Our 2027 season is open for booking now, guided and self-guided, from Austria in February through the Dolomites in September. Every route on this page is on it: Kumano Kodo, James Herriot Way, Cotswold Way, Tour du Mont Blanc, Haute Route, Alta Via 1. All walked by the people who’ll plan your trip.

Past travelers: your alumni rate applies to 2027 guided departures.

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