How I saw Canada's Rockies, bears and glaciers without blowing the budget

Forget Calgary's reputation as Canada's cowboy capital. It is, we are repeatedly assured, a 21st-century metropolis. Our guide, Lynda, is very insistent on this point... which would be a lot more convincing if she wasn't wearing a miniature Stetson hat that looks like it was stolen from a rhinestone-encrusted chihuahua.

"People are surprised at how modern it is," Lynda declares through the microphone, pointing out the window of our coach at the transparent skywalks between buildings that protect downtown pedestrians during the city's winter freeze.

"I call them human gerbil runs," Lynda laughs. I laugh too... then look around nervously to see if anyone else has joined in. It's the first morning of our Cosmos coach tour through western Canada and, although I've already decided I like "Downtown Lynda Brown" (as her friends apparently call her), I don't yet know what to make of the other 33 passengers. I've never done a tour with this many people before. Have I just volunteered to spend the next 10 days as a human gerbil in a motorised wheel?

City tour done, we leave Calgary behind us as we drive up into the Canadian Rockies. I've got one eye out the window on the glistening snowy peaks and forests of pine and aspen. The other is surreptitiously on the group. People seem shy on this first day, with mountains large but talk small. There are quick introductions ("we're from Scotland" or "we're teachers"), but mostly I just hear three dozen people keeping to themselves. Except for the woman at the back who shouts answers to Lynda's rhetorical questions. There may be many, but there's always one.

Alberta's mountains are one of the prettiest parts of Canada and we've got time to enjoy them, with two nights in each of the region's marquee alpine towns. Lynda's acronym for Banff ("Be Aware, Nothing For Free") sounds suspiciously similar to her one for Jasper ("Just Another Small Place Extracting Revenue"), but I soon realise she's being tongue-in-cheek. Like her tiny Stetson (relegated to the overhead bin since Calgary), she's more clown than cowboy, and her jokes about tourist prices in the mountains have found the right audience. After all, the whole point of our tour is to avoid them.

Cosmos drives home its promise of affordability with the whole structure of this ... er, "escorted trip", as Lynda describes it. ("We don't call them 'bus trips' anymore.") The transport is sorted (the coach), as is the accommodation (three-star hotels), but there are no meals and very few activities included. You have the flexibility to spend your time and Canadian dollars however you want.

It's why, in Banff, I use my full free day to hike through verdant forest (and slip on patches of glistening snow) to the summit of Sulphur Mountain. Shops in town selling bear spray have me hopeful I might spot one, but there are no sightings - probably luckily, seeing as I've refused to buy any of the deterrent in my quest for affordability.

And it's why, in Jasper, I spend my morning pottering around the town's shops and galleries, the afternoon walking around the gorgeous nearby lakes, and the evening at the local brewery with a couple of pints and a large plate of elk meatloaf, just to make the day even more Canadian, eh.

The one included activity in the Rockies is a stop at the colossal Columbia Icefield, where an equally hulking six-wheel-drive truck takes us out onto the Athabasca Glacier. The vehicle looks like a lunar rover on steroids but moves like a tortoise on tranquilisers ("they're meant for off-road, not speed," driver Leanne explains), so there's plenty of time for commentary. I notice Leanne keeps calling the glacier "she", so when we get out to walk next to it, I ask why. "It's because the meltwater is a feminine spirit for the First Nations Cree people," she tells me.

It's a beautiful detail, and a reminder of what this tour is missing without organised activities and local guides. The flexibility is nice, but Lynda's wonderful stories on the coach can only take you so far.

All the time without the group in Jasper and Banff means that, even with our glacier experience, we still haven't broken the ice. But our seats rotate each day so I gradually make more introductions. At rest stops, polite nods are turning into interesting conversations, and I learn that the pair of kayakers I'd photographed on a lake at Jasper were actually the young Irish sisters who'd joined the tour simply because it took them to all the spots they'd wanted to visit.

When Lynda asks for Canadian song requests, I suggest Neil Young's Heart of Gold. As it plays, the woman behind me whispers all the lyrics. "Thanks for the request," she says over the seatback. "I used to sing this with my father."

And by the time we've come down from the Rockies and entered British Columbia, common interests have begun to find each other. Overnight in Kamloops - a transit-lounge of a city - eight of the group go to the trivia night at the bar next to our hotel, where they win $10. They tell the bus the next morning they'd called their team Cosmos. "Ooohhh... that's good publicity," Lynda laughs, with a hint of genuine affection.

Lynda has been leading Cosmos tours for more than 20 years. If there's one thing she knows better than how to manage a group, it's the landscapes of western Canada, including the best stretches of highway to put down the microphone and suggest we watch the treeline.

"Bear!" someone shouts. Lynda was right. We all twist our necks but it's gone in a furry flurry. There's a collective sigh, but luckily, a bit further down the highway, some stopped cars give our driver enough notice to pull over. It's a mother bear, digging in the bushes while two adorable cubs jump on logs and skip around her. Everyone on the bus has moved to the window, climbing on the seats, chattering away in a giddy rush of excitement.

Our shared stories - now we have some - carry us across British Columbia and onto a ferry across to Vancouver Island. Included in our tour is one of the island's highlights, the sprawling Butchart Gardens, where the surreal hypercolour wonderland feels like Tim Burton's had too much Tim Hortons. Wandering among hundreds of thousands of blooming flowers, I chat with an Australian couple who share their secret to good gardening (and perhaps a good marriage). "I plant them," the wife tells me, "and he looks after them," nodding at her husband.

Is that also the secret to a good coach tour? Plant the seeds and let the 34 of us look after the rest? I get one last chance to consider that idea with our two-night stay in BC's capital city, Victoria, where we're greeted at the hotel by an elderly kilt-wearing man playing a bagpipe.

The welcome is an apt setup for Victoria, which is known as Canada's most British city, with its grand Romanesque parliament buildings, luxury hotels offering high tea, and ye olde central streetscape. But while some of our group focus on those aspects, I explore the floating neighbourhood of Fisherman's Wharf, have dumplings in Chinatown next to an alley famous as the country's narrowest street, and then spend the afternoon doing tastings at craft breweries.

Yet it feels different to my days in Jasper and Banff. Then, I was a stranger sharing transportation. Now, I'm part of a group, and feel slightly disappointed I don't bump into anyone during my day of activities. I'm probably not alone in thinking that because everyone is already gathered at our unofficial farewell dinner when I arrive a few minutes late.

The next day, our final day, feels like an epilogue as we drive towards Vancouver, knowing everyone will go their own ways once we reach the hotel. Despite Lynda's dark joke about weather forecasting in the city ("If you can see the mountains, it's going to rain. If you can't, it's already raining"), her disposition is still sunny as she asks everyone for their trip highlights.

People say Banff, Jasper, the bears. Someone even suggests the small town of Hope where we stopped for coffee and admired ornate artworks of chainsaw-carved tree trunks (including one of Sylvester Stallone that was still less wooden than his acting). Then one woman, a Canadian who'd never been to this region before, tells the group, "my highlight was the pride I have for my country".

It's all been about Canada, really. You don't come on a Cosmos tour for the hotels (they're fine but nothing memorable), you come for what you do outside them, even those morning expeditions to find breakfast. But for me - and this is what I tell the group when it's my turn - my unexpected highlight was the coach itself.

Far from being the gerbil wheel I feared, it offered something you wouldn't get alone in a rental car: days of stories about the country as a soundtrack to its unfurling landscapes. Stories told by the wonderful Downtown Lynda Brown (as we now call her), who's spent more than 20 years on the road gathering them and sharing them. Sharing them with Canadian pride... and, occasionally, with a tiny cowboy hat.

The writer was a guest of Cosmos