A Canadian Adventure - Day 2

Friday 4 August 2017

A Leisurely Bike Ride

Shak kindly drove us into town from his house in Surrey, dropping us off at Coal Harbour Quay on the waterfront.

Bikes were hired and we enjoyed a leisurely ride around Stanley Park, then down the waterfront to the Science World building.

Some totem poles (top picture) were visited, as well as a rose garden and Beaver Lake, which is turning to forest. Song sparrows were hopping around in the undergrowth, and herons were positioned at strategic intervals along the rocky shore.

The sun glared at us through a haze of smoke, resulting in very poor conditions for photography.

After returning the bikes, we strolled up to the Bill Reid galley. Lots of interesting stuff from this First Nation sculptor. (See middle picture.)

We'd intended to walk up Grouse Mountain but decided to veto that plan due to the heavy smog. Instead we walked along the waterfront, from where the bottom picture was taken.

Shak collected us at 6 pm and dinner was at the the Washington Street restaurant in White Rock. Good seafood.

30 km cycling, 8 km walking.

Just about finished the book I started on the plane journey - Dad You Suck, by Tim Dowling. 

A Canadian Adventure - Day 1

Thursday 3 August 2017

A Long Day.

Up at 4.30 am to get the 6.45 shuttle from Manchester to Heathrow. Only just made it due to a security issue. The small knife that went all the way to Chile and back, was found secreted in my carry on bag. Oops!

Air Canada to Vancouver saw us in steerage, row 60 on the huge and completely full Boeing 777-300ER plane. 10.05 from London, arriving in Vancouver at about 11.30, a short flight apart from the 8 hour time difference.

We pass over the Rockies, shrouded in smoke from recent forest fires. At 21C, the temperature in Vancouver is said to be 13C lower than it would be without the smoke from the fires.

We arrive on time and are soon through customs and immigration - all done electronically here. We think our Vancouver host - Shakeel, one of Sue's work colleagues who happens to be staying at his house in Vancouver will meet us, but he's not there and we fail to contact him. Adjourn to Tim Hortons.

It turns out that we arranged with Shak that he would meet us in the pick up area, which he'd been circling around for an hour whilst we were waiting inside. Oops.

So we eventually reached today's destination - Shak's house in Surrey, where he and Sue are pictured. Later we enjoyed a meal with Shak's former team - Chrissie,  Debbie, Justin, Colin and Brad, at the Olive Garden in Langley.

Now, 24 hours after rising at 4.30 after a poor night's sleep ....

... it's time for a beer. Cheers Shak, and thanks for everything.

“Perfect Angels”

Ahem!

We were blessed with the presence of Batman and Mickey on Sunday afternoon. Batman won a game of boules, and Mickey went to see a hungry tiger.

They both ate lots of lasagne and somehow managed to get through the day without a stomach throwing contest.

My new TZ90 camera came out for the first time. The top picture used flash that I thought was a bit too bright, and the lower one used no flash and was a bit too dark. I can’t find a way of dimming the flash – maybe it automatically dims in auto mode and I’m wrong in thinking that it was too bright in the top photo, which admittedly looks better here than I first thought.

The camera should get a fair amount of use over the next few weeks, though this blog will be rationed to just two or three pictures a day taken with my Samsung S5 that has serious space issues. The ‘Perfect Angels’ won’t be seen until October. We hope they have a great summer holiday.

Wythenshawe parkrun number 299

Dot may complain if I don’t report on this, our last parkrun in the UK for a couple of months.

The picture above shows run director Tris addressing the 269 starters and their dogs from an unusual position. The Wythenshawe Games were taking place at our usual starting point by Oliver Cromwell, so we reverted to the original start point and route near the running track, dating from 2011.

Paul and Jeanette Barber and I spent some time reminiscing about our favourite parkrun – the one that took place on 10 December 2011 with 23 participants and the slowest ‘first home’ time in history. Great results!

I think we’d need a big dump of snow and a ‘snowshoes only’ event to ‘beat’ Paul’s time that day. Whilst I expect some of the Canadian parkruns are snowshoe runs in the winter, it might stretch the management’s patience to arrange one at Wythenshawe. Worth a try though, if we get enough snow.

Sue didn’t manage a PB this week as she waited for a little boy we used to babysit. He’s nearly as tall as his dad now, but he may have been a bit miffed when Sue and Alastair ran off ahead of him down the home straight.

The full results are here.

Sadly we won’t be around for next week’s sixth birthday run, when everyone is supposed to turn up in beach gear. That should be interesting! So I brought a few brownies this week – they didn’t last long…

Friday 28 July 2017 – An Evening Stroll from the Parkgate Inn

Having foregone the chance to enjoy a nice meal with some cool jazz played by Mike in a restaurant in Gatley, I’m afraid I wasn’t amenable to cancelling or postponing tonight’s ‘last of the summer’ evening walk in Deepest Cheshire, despite a drizzly afternoon. Anyway, that option had been rejected earlier on the grounds that there was no other mutually convenient date.

So the Famous Five all dutifully turned up at the Parkgate Inn in Over Peover. The cheap beer went down well and the start time of 7.30 drifted to 8 o’clock as we waited expectantly for others who didn’t arrive. Then we assembled for the above photo call after which Richard and Jenny went home.

That left Sue, Andrew and me to enjoy a route adapted by Andrew to be mudless and short. A very good route it was too.

A fair amount of wildlife was encountered, including this friendly red squirrel.

A giraffe looked on, intimating that she would like to give Andrew a hug.

Meanwhile, a big pussycat was stalking an innocent looking horse that had been spooked by the appearance of a gorilla. The neatly mown lawn is testament to the bravest gardener in Deepest Cheshire.

The real fun began a few minutes later near Merrydale Manor when the horse, frightened by the tiger that was being chased by the gorilla, disturbed a pair of love distracted Canada Geese. The geese flew off, but one of them flew through a barbed wire fence next to our path. It flapped frantically as we approached but it was well stuck and we felt would never have got free of its own accord.

Despite a dislike of these geese, we were obliged to come to the rescue. The frantic bird calmed completely as soon as Andrew wrapped it in his coat. He and Sue held it whilst I wrestled with the impaled wing. It refused to slide off the wire. After a few minutes we decided to rotate the bird through 360 degrees. Luckily we twisted it the right way and the wing eventually came free. The bird was then freed for another attempt at the fence, which this time just damaged a few more feathers. It could fly, but not very well, and at least it could join its friends. Amazingly it appeared to have managed not to evacuate its bowels during the stress of the rescue, much to Andrew’s relief!

It wasn’t far then to the Parkgate Inn, where the inmates were a little surprised to see us again, and were even more surprised to hear that we’d been for a walk in the drizzle when we could have been enjoying the cheap beer.

Here’s the route – 4.6 km in just over an hour.

A New Camera - Panasonic Lumix TZ90

Unfortunately my Canon G16 was injured when I tripped in Austria, giving me the familiar words of death that I’ve experienced on my previous ‘G’ range of cameras:

It was nearly four years old. I could never get it to talk to our computers, nor would the wifi work, but the camera performed ok. (I don’t regard myself as a photographer.)

I clearly needed a replacement for a forthcoming trip, and an estimated repair cost for insurance purposes. Mike Parsons recommended a company called Wilkinson Cameras, who have a shop in Warrington. So I popped down there on Tuesday, got good service, and bought this new camera, which is pretty much a direct replacement for the Canon, but with a longer lens.

An engineer’s report would be needed for the repair cost of the old camera, but the shop reckoned that could be about £150. For a four year old camera – probably not worth it, but the insurers wanted that information, and my policy gives them the opportunity to apply wear and tear and depreciation costs to any claim. Anyway, I sent all the stuff off to Ageas, who deal with Snowcard Insurance’s claims. We have a £50 excess. The Canon cost £300 four years ago. So I was happy to agree to Ageas’s offer to settle the claim for £250, and the money was sent to my bank on Wednesday. It’s the fourth time I’ve claimed under our annual Snowcard policy, and all the claims have been dealt with in this speedy and effective manner.

You’ll see that I bought a hard case for the new camera. It was a surprise that my old Camera Care soft case didn’t provide sufficient protection for the G16.

Thanks go to Mike for his assistance. There are lots of products out there to choose from, and others will have different requirements from me. I just hope the TZ90 proves as easy to use as the FT4 waterproof camera that I have from Lumix – the images from that aren’t particularly high quality, but it enables me to take pictures on wet days and has accompanied me on a good many TGO Challenge walks.

Made in Mannheim in 1938

Here’s the latest offering from Wuxing Nick, our roving reporter from the EU. Some of the exhaust system may not be original, but this Bulldog had a label that dated it at nearly 80 years old.

It looks to have been looked after a bit better than the much newer relics pictured in the previous posting. Cheer up, AlanR!

Sunday 23 July 2017 – A Walk from the Candle Workshops at Burwardsley

Keith had kindly arranged a walk a little closer to home than this group’s usual territory, so Sue, Susan and I enjoyed a leisurely drive to the Candle Workshops at Burwardsley, from where we were soon marched off towards Beeston Castle.

David and I got a bit left behind. Here’s our view of the group of thirteen people ahead of us, with Beeston Castle somewhat obscured by trees in the background.

If the others are somewhere in that picture, I can’t see them and neither could David. Eventually we met them coming the other way near the castle entrance by this smart house. I think they all thought that we’d gone ahead!

We nearly got some ice creams, but the shop was full, so we pressed on to elevenses on some wet grass.

We walk these paths more often in winter, when they are less overgrown and are more muddy. Here’s Andrew, stalking through the long grass, wishing he’d taken a lower dose of shrinking powder.

Peckforton Castle, a Victorian country house built in the style of a medieval castle (unlike Beeston Castle, which dates from the 1220s) invites people to ‘Come in and see this hidden gem’. Keith’s pace hardly faltered as he rushed us past. Another time, perhaps.

The Sandstone Trail that we were following may have petered out here (below), much to the confusion of those with maps, but once Graham had studied Keith’s scratchings the route was retrieved and progress was furthered. To be honest, I don’t really know what was going on. If you blow this picture up and study the expressions you might conclude that I wasn’t alone….

More fields were encountered as we steadily conquered the gradient up to the Peckforton escarpment. Andrew was now back to normal, having taken an antidote to combat his shrinkage. Sue’s CCS.

We expected to find AlanR rummaging around here in his private playground.

He needs to take more care of his exhibits!

This restored classic whizzed past, being driven by a gas tank with flat arms. Weird!

A nearby relic needed a bit of work, but….

… this one has been fully restored – very shiny…

The lunchtime view, once the toes of a toppled tree had been photoshopped out, was one of expansive views over Cheshire and into Staffordshire.

Lunch was duly consumed on a soily plateau, then the team marched off once again.

“They’re an ugly lot”, observed Richard, “so the silhouette works well.”

Near the ‘Poacher’, a fine hostelry that Keith declined to visit, a large stone obelisk rises like a giant phallic carbuncle.

An elite group, the ‘Famous Five’ plus Susan, split off near here in a bid to get home before darkness fell and Jenny suffered nervous convulsions. We paused briefly to admire the vista towards Liverpool and towards the Clwyd Hills where we’d been three weeks earlier. Unfortunately the image captured by my Lumix FT4 isn’t perfect.

There’s a trig point marking the 227 metre summit of Rawhead. It’s decorated with an item of great historical significance. The audience (including two strange women out of shot) was rapt as Richard expounded on the remarkable events that took place here. Jenny cried, as did the two onlookers.

From that great height we hastened down loosely carpeted paths, back to the candle workshops, where Martin and Andrew were rewarded with ice creams as compensation for having to put up with Richard’s tall stories, and a quick exit was made before Jenny could be trampled by a cow in the dark.

It was a pleasant enough route along the weak and twisted backbone of the Peckforton Hills, much of it on the Sandstone Trail footpath – about 16 km with around 500 metres ascent, taking 5.25 hours. The other nine went a bit further. But they haven’t been seen since, though four of them may soon resurface in Newtonmore, where they could be held over for ‘bagging’ offences.

Thanks Keith, for organising this walk.

Saturday 22 July 2017 – Wythenshawe parkrun number 298, and some Boules

After getting back from Austria on Friday evening, we registered Susan (pictured below under the watchful eye of Oliver Cromwell) for her first parkrun on Saturday morning. There are none in her part of the USA (Connecticut) so she registered at Wythenshawe. And a fine performance she put in as well, taking just 25 minutes 19 seconds for the 5 km, and coming fifth out of ten in her 55-59 age category.

Meanwhile, Sue managed another PB, 26 minutes 26 seconds, and came ahead of Ron and first out of ten in her 50-54 age category. Strange – women must get faster as they get older…

It was good to see JJ along for his second parkrun, and another PB in the good conditions.

Cary also managed a PB, but was disqualified for only completing 10% of the route! “My knees hurt!” he wimped…

[Sadly I was over two minutes adrift of my PB.]

Full results are here.

The day flew past, but at 6 o’clock we found ourselves playing boules with the Adlington Quizzers (aka The San Marinos) at the Black Horse in Croston. Thanks go to John and Bev for organising an excellent evening with the boules, followed by a nice pie and chips. Sadly the picture below is the only one I took, picturing Susan, Sue, Robert and Louise, whilst John, Lyn, Stuart, Bev and I looked on. Good fun, and narrowly avoiding some rain.

Farewell to the Austrian Alps

Friday 21 July 2017

An 'easy' journey home. Usual 7 am breakfast. It would be good to maintain that habit.

8.06 bus to Kitzbühel. I had the receipt for €56 for four passengers on that very bus. But the receipt was not a ticket. "Schisse internet" expleted the driver, who reluctantly let us on.

It was a lovely sunny morning, but not a good driver, for whom the cloud that engulfed Mittersill was more appropriate. We'd dropped into the cloud inversion, but by the time we reached Kitzbühel at 9.20 it was sunny and hot again, for the rest of the day.

After coffee etc and lunch provisions in Baguette, outside which a classic car drew up, we caught the 10.35 to Wörgl where we swapped platforms for the train to Munich Ost, where we should change for the airport.

The train duly paused at Munich Ost, but a lack of urgency on the part of my laid back companions led to the doors shutting just as we were about to disembark.
"Don't panic, Mr Mainwaring"....

Thus we spent the next hour travelling there and back from Munich Central rather than in a café outside Munich Ost.

Never mind, having got to the airport - a vast and somewhat confusing place, I had to wait for an hour before I could drop the hold bag, with all its dangerous contents, off at the easyJet bag drop.

After quite a long queue for passport control, and a search for explosives, we got to the gate in plenty of time. This part of the journey went perfectly smoothly and Penny kindly picked us all up from the airport.

A most enjoyable trip.

Home by 7.30.

Austria - Day 12

Thursday 20 July 2017 - Sankt Poltener Hut to Matreier Tauern Haus (1512 metres)

8.5 km
200 metres ascent
3.5 hours
16000 steps

Marie served us the usual breakfast for a hut that doesn't have a goods lift - bread, sliced meat, cheese, jam, etc plus as much tea and coffee as you like, and even some specially made hot chocolate for Cary.

Then a delay until 8 o'clock when they could check that Markus had actually paid a deposit when he booked on our behalf.

A sunny walk from the start. We climbed to a small summit, Weinbicht (2545 metres), then gradually descended after a contouring section featuring the final snow patch of the trip.

Saxifrage and mouse-ear were growing amongst the rocks. There were lots of large, curious sheep, and fine views across the valley to Gross Venediger.

The path passed three picturesque lakes, Grauer See, Schwarzer See and Gruner See, with tumbling cascades in between them and reflected mountains within them.

We loitered for some time on a bench beside the lower lake, enjoying the mountain scenery from a little below 2000 metres for the first time for many days.

Several groups were ascending. Perhaps Sankt Poltener Hut would do some lunchtime business.

The path wove its way down the valley, with a little bogginess as we passed through cow pastures. Then it threaded in and out of pines, emerging at a car park from where a short stroll brought us to the hamlet of Tauer, where sadly our twelve day trek drew to a conclusion.

We arrived before midday, so had plenty of time to enjoy a lavish lunch before catching the 13.10 bus to Matrei.

The Matreier Taurnhaus came up trumps. Sue and I enjoyed a superb salad of goats cheese, red onion, lettuce, cauliflower, carrot and button mushrooms with a large crouton,  whilst chickens wandered beneath the tables.

The bus delivered us to the door of Hotel Hinteregger, where a cup of tea was enjoyed before a little bit of washing to make us acceptable for the journey home.

Outside, a violent thunderstorm obscured the mountains. We have been very lucky!

A lazy afternoon was followed by a sociable evening with the Collett's staff and clients who are based here, in particular it as good to catch up properly with Graham and Mary, who we hope to see here next year. It's a great location.