Maths & Metrication

Blackberry Harvest Begins

Tue Jul 27th

Wed Jul 28th

View from one of the Gibsons shopping malls
reminds me of Northern Exposure!

Canada has gone metric, sort of.  Many will remember market traders and greengrocers in the UK holding out against metrication and still selling fruit and veg in imperial measurements.  That was until a few fines were handed down and other than a few die-hards, decimalisation won and most are now metric.

It is slightly more confusing in Canada.  Distances on roads, speeds and fuel is metric.  Length and size in builders merchants is imperial for plumbing, timber, fixings and tools (spanners etc), but not loose nails which are sold in kg.  The imperial measures are the US influence.

You can by a litre of milk, a pound of butter (Canadian) or 2kg of sugar or 2lbs of BC apricots.  Having been schooled in imperial, then switching to metric, my wood purchases will be in imperial measures. 

The maths challenge has been the installation of the drip irrigation system for use on the herbs and veg pots while we're away in Whistler for ten days. 

'Waters 15-25 Plants' proclaims the box.  Just the job.  Except it doesn't.  The manifold has 6 outlets, but there are only four splitters.  Two times four is eight and the two remaining manifold outlets make it ten.  By this time I'd cut the pipe into pieces and connected up the ten pots. So there was no taking it back.  Hey ho.  The drip is a huge understatement.  Thirty minutes of drip watering and the pots were overflowing.  A timer was purchased to allow 15 minutes of watering once a day.  I can't but help feel $100 for six tomatoes and fresh herbs for the summer, is at the top end!  Fred disagrees!

Late afternoon we headed back to Roberts Creek Falls and did the route in reverse.

The purple line on the trail map gets a bit squiggly in places.  We were not exactly lost, just couldn't find the correct track.  At the point the path ran immediately alongside the creek with a 20' drop and Jack bounding around all over the place, we decided to try other paths.

Jack enjoyed it!  We stopped off briefly at Bonnie Brook beach on the way back, where Chaster Creek  runs into the sea.  The Creek is little more than a trickle of water with no fresh rain to replenish the flow..  The tide was in though so Jack had an extended swim.

The blackberries have started to ripen so I spent an hour Wednesday morning collecting 9lbs (or 4.08kg) and hardly scratched the surface, just my hands and arms.

The plan was for blackberry jam, until the Norfolk branch enquired if I was planning blackberry gin. Gin added to shopping list.

After lunch I headed into town, to the Royal Bank of Canada.  Our move to the Sunshine Coast elicited a $926 rebate from the state car insurer, ICBC, as the area is deemed lower risk.  This is in addition to a $680 Covid credit that was put back on the the credit card.  I had explained to ICBC that as we didn't yet have a Canadian bank account a cheque might not be a great deal of help.  Our UK bank won't take foreign cheques.

Armed with the certificate of insurance, UK driving license, passport and cheque with accompanying letter, I asked the teller if I could cash the cheque in the absence of a bank account.  "No problem, sign the back please, and let me have your ID".  A few minutes later I was unexpectedly leaving the bank with $926 in my wallet.

Wednesday afternoon, Fred resisted the temptation to go for a walk and I wanted to explore the beach at Williams Landing.  About 5k up the Coast towards Port Mellon.  Sadly there was no beach access only private properties.  I headed back towards Gibsons to walk up Soames Hill.

We last did the trail back in May, when we were staying at Bonnie Brook.  There is a flat trail at the bottom and then a steep climb to the top.  Much of the climb is on wooden stairs.  I counted about 500 on the 500m horizontal distance of the climb.  An elevation of 126m.  Steep and I did get to the very top looking at the track on my return, though the trail looked rather indistinct at the top.

The view is stunning, a brief video below.

Driving back from Gibsons there are two routes.  The lower road from Gibsons Harbour along Marine Drive, or on the upper road via Highway 101 and the bypass down to the ferry terminal.

The road can be quite busy around ferry arrivals and departures, otherwise it is extremely quiet with some stunning views across Bowen Island with the backdrop of the mainland mountains behind.

It really does sum up the BC scenery.