Expedition Canada

Along with other Wildlife! Wed March 6th It will be Major General Sir, from now on! If you are familiar with the plot of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance, you will know that Frederic's indenture with the pirates has to be extended until 1940 because he was born on Feb 29th.  The small print of which (one should always read) indentures him until his 21st birthday, not his 21st year.  I mention it only because the production I'm in (I'm still not sure how I got talked into it) which is about to start it's final four shows out of seven this evening, and seems to have taken over every waking moment of my life for the last month,  missed the opportunity of doing its first performance on Feb 29th, as it opened on March 1st.  It's not only involved me.  Fred has been on wardrobe duty making costumes with her trusted 46 year old sewing machine. Fred with the Pirate King whose costume she made As part of my research for the Major General role I watched an...

Again! The Creek beneath Shannon Falls It has not been a great year for Whistler, the snow was late arriving, closely followed by warm weather and rain.  The week-long freeze and subsequent snow did not lay enough of a base for Whistler to get through the latest warm, wet spell.   After our wet Whistler Christmas, we headed up the Sea-to-Sky highway on Monday 29th in rain, fog and 8c.  Waterfalls of varying sizes were cascading down the rocks alongside the highway from the combined rain and snowmelt and the creeks were thunderous.   We stopped off at the Shannon Falls  on the way up, the third highest falls in BC.  The volume of water was such that it was impossible to see the main falls because of the spray showering us from 50' away.   It was quite a sight and sound. We felt like we were in the falls! The creek running off at the base of the falls It is not only Whistler that it 'enjoying' the warm weather.  All three ski cen...

At Last Fri Jan 19th Owning a Land Rover is no guarantee you know how to drive it On my Tuesday (Jan 16th) morning dog walk along Bonniebrook, I said to a fellow walker whose view was that we were about to be buried in snow, 'I'll believe it when I see it'.   Driveway cleared The next morning we awoke to 200mm of snow and by the time I'd finished clearing the drive down to the road it was nearer 300mm (1ft in old money).   Of course the good news in all this, is that Whistler, which has had an abysmal start to the season, now has a decent amount of snow.   We hope it lasts until the end of the month when we head back up there for five days and it is not as soggy as our Christmas excursion.  Although conditions were 'moist', Fred did manage to get some skiing in with Nick.  The new hip passed the test with flying colors, even if they did come back soaked! Back from the Whistler Christmas expedition, I'd still not shaken off the post ...

Merry Christmas Christmas 2023 A week after the pleasure of babysitting my sickly grandson I had the pleasure of my first experience of Covid.  I have managed to avoid it for four years.  I was feeling very smug in the summer when eight of the ten college reunion party went down with it, only me and the husband of the college mate who lives 30 minutes up the Coast in Half Moon Bay escaping the lurgy then.  The smug grin has gone, along with my voice and energy!  Little more than a bad cold, but it sure is hanging around. A local mystery was solved last week after several days of the hummingbird feeder being drained overnight. Some nights it dropped to half full, other nights completely emptied.  Locals suggested it could be bats, which are known to drink from hummingbird feeders, or possibly racoons.  We have both in abundance locally. Camera set up and culprit caught on the first night.  A racoon.  Climbing on to the top of a plant pot the racoon...

Marlborough Wed Nov 29th Two of the family of otters on the shoreline On my morning ambles with Jack I've got chatting to a fellow dog walker who has a bouncy Irish Terrier, eight months old and paws the size of snowshoes.  Well I never...she is from the UK and lived near Bristol.  Her husband comes from Marlborough and he and his three brothers, all went to the same school as Nick and Ros. One brother in the same year and friends group as Ros.   I suspect one of the masters from the school and occasional reader of this blog, might might know the four Loosemore lads.  It's Tom who is out here and living a few hundred yards away, as the Bald Eagle flies.   This is the second person from Marlborough (Pop. 9129) we know living on the Coast (100km long and Pop. 32,000), though the first one moved from Marlborough when the population was probably half what it is now!  I am going to have to start reading up on 'probability' though I suspect the rug...