And we're back

With some style - Mr Harrison's place comes with a view of Kew Bridge and in winter Kew gardens, although at this time of year the trees on the Brentford Ait gets in the way a bit.

Knees picked us up from the airport, got all the luggage in the little Mazda with no problems, and took us for a curry at the Shaon , and Maria has popped out for a fresh seeded bloomer for breakfast - all the things we've missed.

Down the rabbit hole

I saw this advertised on TV here in Canada yesterday, and thought it was a spoof until it was repeated this evening



https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wick-VIPoo-Lemon-Idol-Spray/dp/B01N42EYS7

then figured I've been transported to a parallel dimension, But it turns out there's a whole raft of these out there floating in the ether as it were. Actually some of the online marketing is hilarious - references to devils doughnuts and tucking the turtles' head back in its shell had Maria and I sat on the sofa almost wetting ourselves, although I don't think it works for that. Personally I can't wait to try the "Rosy Starfish", but Maria thinks I need something more akin to "Titanic and Iceberg"......

100 and out

Just scraped in my 100 days and I'm now done for the season, partly because I'm now officially fed up with grey skies, bad light and being snowed on, partly because the other boot broke this afternoon and I can't face making another bushing with hand tools when I'm only a few days away from my shed and power everything.

Whistler or Rockies? Both have their good and bad points  - Sunshine and to a certain extent Lake Louise groom better than Whistler, and are a lot quieter, the snow at Sunshine has stayed in fantastic condition being higher, and I never got rained on while skiing this year. On the other hand it has been a drag having to drive to the hills every day, and it has definitely reduced my drinking as by the time I get back and change I can't be bothered walking into town.

I'm glad I've done both, I've skied more trees and powder bowls than I ever have in Europe and I've skied in -30c with wind chill and survived, but I miss my super G carvers and really well groomed steep pistes. In 2006 after our first visit to Whistler I said I would not bother travelling to the US and Canada just to ski again, and I think I stand by that.

Overall I think Whistler wins for the variety of terrain and the convenience. But neither stacks up to Austria or Italy for the village feel, grooming, mountain food and apres....it might be a few more years before we do a winter in Europe, but i'm definitely looking forward to a season in Selva or St Anton.

Friends and dinosaurs

Life here continues with the same routine. Mark skis five days a week and rests his legs at weekends (read - sits on the sofa and shouts at the TV). He's thrown my routine this week as he's had two days off having skied the weekend with Blair and Jeremy. As for me, I go out walking everyday (even in the arctic-like weather we've experienced this winter - although I've not been moving too far the last few weeks due to a fall on the ice and twisting my back), distributing posters around town for events at the ArtsPlace, choir practice and baking.

So it has made a nice change having visitors over the last month. Kevin joined us for two weeks and when they weren't on the mountain we did the tourist thing and visited a few places in and around Banff.

Cave and Basin is at the site of natural thermal mineral springs and is the birthplace of Canada's National parks, now known as Banff National Park.

The pools were closed in 1975, restored ten years later then closed again in 1992. There are many naturally occurring hot springs in the Banff area that flow through Sulpher Mountain. We visited Banff Upper Hot Springs which is just an outdoor pool but is featureless, unlike Chena in Alaska, Liard River hot springs in British Columbia or Mataranka Thermal pool in Australia's Northern Territory all of which were natural.

On the way back down into town I spotted a pair of elk grazing on the banks of the river

Next stop, Lake Minnewanka, a glacial lake and at 21km long it's the longest in the mountain parks of the Canadian Rockies. As you can see, Kevin was walking very gingerly as the paths were slick with ice

As it was very icy, on the way back to the car Mark suggested I walked across the hardened snow instead of the path. All was going well until all of a sudden the snow wasn't that hard anymore and in that fraction of a second, I sunk down to my thigh. I think the shocked look on my face said it all.

A few days after Kevin went home, Blair and his brother Jeremy came for a visit. As they didn't arrive until the evening, we went to Drumheller for the day to see the dinosaurs. It was a bit out of our way when we crossed Canada a few years ago in the summer and we had always wanted to visit. The Royal Tyrrell Museum, named in honour of Joseph Burr Tyrrell, a geologist who accidentally discovered the first reported dinosaur fossil in 1884 while searching for coal seams (later named the Albertosaurus), has around 40 dinosaurs and over 110,000 fossils. Here are just a few of the exhibits:

Now its back to a normal routine and counting down to going home... 

UK visit and beyond

We're now only 3 weeks away from our visit home, so some plans are starting to come together.

We fly in to Gatwick on Thursday April 27th and are going to be staying at Philip Harrison's riverside pad at Kew Bridge while he is away doing some travelling of his own through May.

We're going up to Blackpool to meet the tenants, check over the  bungalow and see Maria's uncle John the first week in May, then we should be back in London for the rest of the month. After that who knows - we will probably need to go back up to Blackpool to do some maintenance for a couple of weeks at some stage, and Maria already has a couple of holidays booked as she needs a break after such a hectic life over the past 5 years....

Backstop: we fly back to Calgary on August 10th to pick up the RV, so should be heading down to the US and Glacier national park a couple of days later, hope to catch up with our friends Pris and Bill at their place in Oregon for the solar eclipse and then on down to southern California to sell the RV. Depending on how that goes we may get out to Hawaii for a few weeks, but in any case will then be heading for central america for 9 months or so - Mexico, Guatamala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Honduras and Belize. Then South America as their spring starts....

This mountain is MINE

you may share it when i'm done....

Blair (37) and his brother Jeremy (31) were with us for a few days and I can still beat them down the hill, and not just because I had a head start while he was buggering around with his tellytubby camera - Blair is more energetic than me going down the bumpy stuff, but I can overtake him on the carving sections: experience and gravity can still win over youth and enthusiasm.

mind you, afterwards my legs felt a bit like this....

and for those who know me, no, there is no finger. I didn't know he was filming in contravention to my usual rule that youtube does not need any more videos of my arse going down a hill....