Hello Nelson

So after remembering to get on the greyhound we made it to Nelson, this time we didn't miss a day but gained an hour somewhere between here to there we went back in time, (very Michael J Fox!) so we are now 8 hours behind all you in good old Blighty :)

Tim health check:- still not great, today when he breathes he sounds like a perculator or an accordion, he's snoring peacefully as i type this to all you lovely people. When we first got here we went for breakfast I had a carrot, raisin & bran muffin and Tim had what can only be described as a breakfast pasty (Mrs white junior you would of loved it) so everyone was happy :)

We did try boarding yesterday but Tim only lasted one run then had to go inside, (poor thing) so i went playing by myself in the snowy fir trees, a lot of giggling from me as i had to fight my way out of a few big snow holes i managed to end up in but as an added bonus i did come away with a the beautiful smell of fresh pine, very much like a Nissan sunny taxi cab. The snow here is great, there was even some powder that hadn't been tracked, the mountain is about a 20min bus ride from the hostel, there is no snow in Nelson town but we do have a lake (not frozen) a harbour and a beach!!! Not sure we'll be donning the swimmers just yet but it's there as an option.

We met a really nice couple here Craig & Ashley, they are from Ontario, just engaged :) we're going to watch the hockey final with them tomorrow, it starts at 12pm and then it's the closing ceremony of the Olympics so hopefully stay around to watch that too. I don't have my foam finger anymore I'll just have to shout at the TV like a local perhaps. So no boarding tomorrow not until Tim's better and as luck would have I seem to have developed a cough & snotty nose...........I'm not happy, that means no running for me, did i mention the lake and the beach!

So Nelson, well what can i tell you, it is literally full of hippies I've never seen so much tie dye and dreadlocks and ill fitting "comfy" clothes in one place. Tim is fitting in a treat with his beard, it truly is a beauty now. Oh and the twin room where we we're going to push the beds together, just for your information a twin is just another way of saying one set a bunk beds. But we do have our own sink in our room, all the mod cons here don't you know.


I think this is our favourite hostel it feels more like a lovely quaint hotel or B&B without the &B. The Dancing Bear is a Heritage building which is really nice. You have to take your shoes off when you come in as all the floors are lovely and wooden, and the kitchen has a huge gas hob and kettles that whistle :) The people here I would say are chilled and more our age group, no youth club activities for us thank god, there is an old lady here, who bless her does look like a witch, who has lived in hostels all her life and she's not happy as a large group are turning up next week and she has to go else where, i fear she may cast a spell or something!

The town is great everything you want from a harbour, an airport, yoga centres to Buddhist temples, fish market, organic co-op, lovely coffee shops and a walmart! Tim was very excited as you could buy everything from a toothbrush to a snow plough to attach to the front of your BIG truck!!! There are only 2 directions in Nelson, the taxi driver told us when we arrived, up hill or down hill. As you can imagine the walking is quite taxing when the pair of you are feeling pathetic!!!!
There are so great hiking trails round here so hopefully we'll get out and see some of them. I see there's also a lakeside labyrinth!, not sure what that is so we may have to take a look.

We're moving on from here on Thursday so last night is Wednesday....(lets make sure we don't get that wrong again). We think we'll be going to Big White which is near Kelowna, so another greyhound journey for the travelling marshs.

Right Tim's still snoring at me and I'm in need a hot lemon as I'm getting through the fisherman's friends at a rate of knots, so I shall bid you all a farewell, sending you lashings of loves from a sickly K&T xxx

so that was Fernie.......

hello again,

Sorry I know it's been a while so you get a double hit of the travelling marshs for your pleasure, so Fernie was lovely, beautiful town, really nice people in the hostel and with Tim's snoring and coughing we got to our have own room for the last couple of nights. On the Tim health check he's still not tip top, we didn't do any more boarding in Fernie, just the 2 days as the snow wasn't great and neither was my husband and it seems a waste of money to go out on bad snow when can save our dimes for where the snow is good, so i ran and ran and ran along the Elk river, on the last day it snowed in the town, which was nice but slippy! We did go for a walk,, (check out the the pic, lovely viewing quite literally breath taking!) but it was a quiet one as when ever Tim tried to talk he started coughing, in the long run walking on a chilly day even when you're wrapped up doesn't help the chest!!

Now Tim & I have made our first school boy error by missing our 3am greyhound bus out of Fernie, you see, and I know this going to sound stupid but as we're not working we kind of lost track of days..and well what with Tim spending most of the time in bed and me running like a loon we seem to of lost Wednesday!!! So $15 later to reschedule the greyhound tickets and another $30 for a bed at the hostel we got on the 3am bus heading to Nelson on Thursday morning.

Thought I would just add an image of our curtains from the hostel, now Nerys I know you'll love them, but I wasn't sure if they were quirky or scary....either way they did the job of a curtain so that's all that matters really :)

Fernie so far......

Hello me again,

So where were we ah yes Fernie, well it's a lovely little town with no commercial things like McDonalds or starbucks it's great :) just little coffee shops and lots of board shops and the odd grocery shop here and there. It's nesteled in the valley of the Rocky Muntains in Beautiful British Columbia. The hostel is nice, the people are more our age range, no youth club activities of an eve, they do have a bar and a big kitchen where we have our free pancake breakfast before we go boarding, i'm liking bananas with a drizzle of maple syrup, it's quickly burnt off after several hours boarding.

So the boarding well the snow is better than Banff but still not great, It's really nice to have new places to explore and the mountians are great here, they have so many bowls to play in, which i did most of yesterday with a young chap we met at the hostel who lives in Ruislip Manor, so just round the corner from where we used to live, and that's not the weirdest coincidence there's a guy here (Mac) who not only used to live in Ruislip Gardens but also now lives in maidenhead and used to work downstairs from Tim (in what was WRL!!)... and now works with Chris Pether for those that remember him! Also, another guy (Gavin) who last year went on a canoeing trip from Glasbury-on-Wye!!!!! VERY small world or is there some sort of pull for people like us to Fernie?

So back to the snow, we do seem to be chasing the powder somewhat (that is not a drug reference!), we're moving on again on Thursday 3am, we love those early starts, to a tree hugging, hippy cool place called Nelson which is VERY laid back, it'll be great :) Also the hostel looks lovely and we get to have a twin room, (we might even nudge the beds together). From there we can board to Whitewater ski resort which will be new and interesting :)

Poorly Tim's ill again, he has a cold, honestly what is he like the one time we get to have fun together and he's in bed! Tomorrow i'm wrapping up warm and getting him out for a walk if it's the last thing i do. So this morning while he was asleep i went for a great run about 8 miles along the frozen river Elk with the bright sunshine on my back, I didn't see any wildlife apart from lots of beaver dams and dog walkers, which was nice:)

It's really nice here everyone say "hello" when you pass them in the street, my dad would love it :)

So we saw our first hockey match live the other night, with foam fingers and everything, OMG! that was an experience we went with the guys from here who are all avid "Fernie Ghost Riders" fans, so with neither of us knowing the rules apart from my favourite which is if you're still standing you can keep on fighting, and i mean real fist fighting with the refs watching until one hits the floor.....it really was an eye opener. My other favourite thing was the locals, where on entering the hockey stadium you are welcomed with a raffle to win the biggest most evil looking cross bow killing machine, but what was nice was that it was set up just next to the candy vending machines, (kids love'em!)
At half time they had mini hockey players, who were great, with mini carnage, it was like we'd moved back a mile or so away from where we were sitting and things had been put into slow motion.

We sat and watched Canada loose to the USA in the olympics last night, the room was very quiet, i must say they don't seem to fight as much as the Ghost Riders do! So i see we got a gold a medal, honestly you wouldn't know it - if it's not Canadian it's not on the TV, our favourite bit is if they win silver or bronze they don't bother with interviewing the other gold medalists:) Sorry but we won't be popping up in the background of any of the BBC interviews as we're won't be there by then.

So that it i think, Tim has fallen asleep on the sofa, (this is a recurring theme in any hostel we seem to visit so far), unfortunately no roaring fire in this one!

we'll be signing off now, over and out from the travelling marshs :)

The Littlest Hobos

So today we experienced our first greyhound bus journey. And by
experienced of course I mean we had our very souls sucked out of us in
the greyhound depot, like being attacked by the death eaters from
Harry Potter (well I suppose they have to be somewhere between
filming). A quick look at some of the other travellers collected there
was enough to know it was already too late.... They might just as well
have been locked up in Azkabhan prison.

The depot (in downtown Calgary) is worth noting if not least for
it's choice of ambient music at 6:00am... First we were treated to
some 70s light jazz (i didn't appreciate at the time that this would
be the highlight but at least it accompanied the decor of the diner
quite well); it was followed by a compilation of tunes which I can
only presume was entitled 'music to annoy people by'... It worked.

People are strange. No more so than at 5:30am in downtown Calgary. The
one that sat next to us looked like he might well have been one of the
founding fathers (think a wrinkly Elmer Fudd complete with hunters hat
and jacket). I can confirm that he has given up trying to catch that
pesky wabbit but has instead taken to drinking pepsi and then
producing deep rumbling belches... with every sip! There can't be
that much gas in a pepsi?!

We also underwent the most pointless security search so far. The level
of searching appeared to be inversely proportional to the difficulty
the security officer (see, I know all the lingo) would have in re-
packing the bag. And since my bag was something like a puzzle from the
crystal maze, I ended up just telling him what was inside! But what
made it even more pointless (and something you could not have known at
this stage, a bit like an agatha christie novel always leaving a vital
clue until the end) was that we had already been on a greyhound for
the previous two hours just to get to the depot!

Now I know that all sounds very negative but as I write this final
paragraph it is 11:00am, we're one hour from our destination and we
are surrounded by snowy pastures & farms with chilly horses and in the
rapidly approaching distance are the magnificent rocky mountains...
We're very happy and excited :-) but not as excited as the bus
Windscreens wipers which seem to have a crazy independant life of
their when switched on. And we're not talking normal. Wipers here...
These babies are pneumatic!! They just have to do everything bigger
here!

Well, that's enough for this blogette, normal service will be resumed
shortly with katy at the helm... Oh, and for those who know him, Les
says 'Hi'.

The long walk......

So valentine's was nice, we went out to Earls one of our favourite places when we were in Banff before, Tim got free pint from the waiter (Frank) who took pitty on us with our dime watching, he knows it's not easy to live cheap in Banff. So a very happy valentine's for Tim :) and I had chicken so everyone had a good evening.

We've only had a couple more days on the mountians and it's not great so we have booked our next port of calls, we're off to Ferni at 3.30am Thursday morning for a 9 hour greyhound coach journey, which will be nice! then after 6 days there we're heading to Nelson a laid back hippy town, so hopefully less "youth" and more snow *******for 7 days then we'll see where next.

Tim's ill, i fear i may of broken him, he thinks it was because he was smug about not getting ill on the plane...either way i have snotty, sleepy husband :( so today i went for a walk, a long walk as it turned out. I left Tim at 10am and didn't get back until about 4.30pm, he was going to give me another 30mins before he called the park rangers! I did walk for miles or kilometres if you will. I did the Marsh Loop, The Sundance Canyon & Cave & Basin, got lost in the woods for a while but ended up at the Banff hot springs for a dip in a very hot pool, some great people watching oppurtunities to be had. I didn't come across too much wildlife on my walk or hike lets call it, apart from a squirel, but i did feel i was being watched from the trees, luckily i came back unharmed or gnawed!

That's all folks for the time being, i've put all the pics up on facebook if you want to view the album so far :)

big loves K&T xx

Happy Valentine's Day

Hello,

Today is Valentine's day and as I let my very tired husband catch 40winks i've been allowed to grab Tosh and tell what we've been up to before we head into town for a slap up (cheap) meal.

So what's happened since we last chatted, well incase you're not aware it's the winter olympics over here and the Canadians LOVE it, as do we which is good :) We watched the opening ceremony with random cheers from different nationalities here in the hostel.....GB had quite a big one as did the Aussies and Kiwi's, honestly they're everywhere!

We've been very active since we arrived so much to do, Timmy doesn't know what's hits his poor body, it's been constant activity since we landed (apparently it's like being married to the duracel bunny!), and tomorrow where off hiking up "tunnel mountain". He's loving it really. The boarding has been great sunshine and lake louise still have enough snow there area few patches that catch you out, although today at Sunshine was a "family weekend" which translated is a bloody busy mountain and busy eating areas, but everyone be very polite, which was nice :) with far too many children for my liking, especially as they are all great at ski-ing and boarding so no hardly no paniful wipe outs to be seen :)

So yesterday we had a lovely skype chat with the white juniors and white seniors all very funny, although the juniors did sound like they we're on an old bbc radio broadcast at times....it's the time delay i think, and me getting used to the PC after all i'm a MAC through and through. If anyones randomly up in the middle of the night and fancy a chat please feel free to ping an email and hook up with us online ;)

I had a great run, big birds again but also a herd of Elk which was lovely :) We then headed into town with our package lunch for a wander, and thought we would walk, laong the river where went last time we were here only to find it completely frozen over with an ice hockey pitch in the middle and an ice rink round the edegs! Now that was some good viewing, honeslty you can spot the Brit a mile away they are usually on their arses while all the Canadians just skate past, it's in their blood after all. We also saw a lady deer hit a car, yes she hit the car, they just roam in the streets here you see and she was scared by a couple of (stupid) young girls and ran away right in to the side of the car, rolled over the bonet and carried on running into the woods, (poor thing) the car luckily was made a mostly plastic and Tim assures me will just pop back out, thankfully it wasn't one of the many HUGE trucks most people drive around here. So that was a nice end to the day.

We're going to be moving on from Banff on Thursday (like the littlest hobo) heading to Nelson down south a bit where the snows been falling. On our first long bus journey think it's about 14 hours!

Right time to wake a sleeping Tim my tummies rumbling,

big loves, catch up soon.

K & T xx

we've got us a tosh!

hello all

we'll as you can see we're netbooked up with Tosh our friendly Toshiba :) he's going to make keeping up with us a lot quicker and easier, that is until he get stollen! (that ones for you Nerys).

so what have we been up to? well we left old Blighty, Tim's filled you in on that one, we have pics now for you to view. So Canada, we'll what can i say? people are lovely, hostel is lovely, snow could be better ******* like the littlest hobo we'll be moving on to the snow soon.

We've boarded for 2 days so far, lake louise yesterday which was fab and sunshine on monday (a great way to spend a monday) was good but not as good as last time, oh last time fluffy pow!!! anyway today was a rest day so we went on a hike down the Hoodoo trail, lovely walking along the frozen river, i went out into the middle scaring Tim as no elses footprints had gone that far :) it was fine......so off boarding again tomorrow to try and find some snow, the patchy ice is no fun on the baords, thank Dakine for impact shorts.

Our dorm sharing is great!! I'm in the pent house, at it were and Tim's in the basement flat. We'renot the oldest people here but we are in minority, there's a snowboard school of 75 "kids" here so that's nice! it's keeping us young and down with the kids, Tim's even thinking in joining in and shaving all his hair off, it's what they do!!!!

So far on the wilderness hand book we can tick off an Elk and a Coyote. Bear are sleeping until end of March so ssshhhh!!

I went for a great run the other day making packing my running kit a justifiaction and my gps watch it was great if a little lonely just me treesand very big birds, like crows but more like a small aircraft...honestly they are huge!

Right time to add some pictures for your pleasure and say a farewell from me and him :)

Ruislip to Canada, eh

So, where's all the updates?!

Ok - here's the deal: we haven't managed to get a netbook yet and whilst this iTouch is all cool and trendy it does not lend itself to multimedia presentations! So until said laptop is purchased we're keeping things brief and without photos!! Hope to find a shop which sells more than souvenir t-shirts and keyrings (basically anything faintly Olympic) soon so we can do this properly!

Leaving ruislip: crazy, last minute, manic, emotional. I didn't think it was possible for such a small flat to hold so much stuff! But after throwing out forty bags of 'rubbish' (tim's stuff) and storing all the valuable remains (katys stuff) we now have a flat that you could swing a cat in (so long as he doesn't mind some bruising on his extremities). The feat was only acheived with the help of key family members (who are also storing yet more stuff)... You know who you are. Oh, and the hitherto thoroughly reliable Peugeot chose the day before we left to detach it's exhaust from the rest of the car... Katy thought it sounded like a lambourghini - I'm not so sure.

I will skim over the goodbyes at the airport for fear of welling up again (katy, not me you understand). A nine hour flight and two hour transfer later and we we're in Banff. We started off in our own private room which was pretty much like a hotel room but we figured that wasn't in-keeping with our adventure so we have fully embraced a multiple occupancy dorm... Not as bad as it might sound... Time will tell.

Been boarding for a couple of days but no powder like the last time we were here so thinking of heading to kicking horse or fernie next week.

Ok, I can't face any more typing on this playskool keyboard so this is me signing off for now. Miss you all... A little... Somtimes :-)

t & k
xxxxx

Bags packed...

3 more sleeps.......

So today was banks, Nerys viewing and more packing. We went and chatted to the banks today to tell them of our soon to be departute and not to stop our cards while we're on our travels, thank you very much. Then onto see lovely Nerys, who is laughing in the face of breast cancer, as it were, well what else can you do?An absolutely delightful afternoon of coffee, cakes an a good old laugh :), (thanks to the MOW for the cakes) I look forward to the which wig images she promised to share. She also told us to get our arses into gear go pack and blog, so as promised here we are, now how does such as a small flat hold so much stuff?

Right the night is still young and there are more boxes that need to be filled..........