canada – Heron and Home and Abroad

Mundy Park

One of the strangest things about coming to Canada these days is changing base from New Westminster to Coquitlam. We’re unbelievably lucky though to have a good friend of my mum’s who’s happy to not just host us, but also mother us, whilst we’re here. It’s also been a great opportunity to discover some new places.

My first morning here Jen, Dad and I went for a walk around the local park. Just 10 minutes down the road and marked by a typical, unassuming green square on GoogleMaps, I was totally unprepared for what we found – a 400 acre rainforest hiding just behind a shopping mall.

We didn’t even manage to set foot in the park before we spotted the first bird – a stunning little yellow chap, flitting around in an evergreen. It was very fast moving and the branches were thick, but fortunately it flew over to a smaller tree where I could get a slightly better look, and a fuzzy photo. Back at home with the bird book and the help of a Facebook group dedicated to British Columbia birds, it was identified as a Wilson’s warbler.

The park was fantastic with tall, tall trees which helped create a barrier against the street noise and plenty of decaying trunks. After the bright sunlight, the shade was very welcome.

We only explored a fraction of the park and I hope we have time to visit again before we leave. There was plenty of wildlife around, as we could tell from the birdsong, but not much that we actually managed to see – a couple American robins (unrelated to our European robins, and actually members of the thrush family) and two Eastern grey squirrels, which I must confess look slightly odd to me now after our beautiful reds back at home. There are also black bear and deer, although we didn’t see any signs of either of them.

Back outside the park, the sun was glaring and I was missing my sunglasses.

Back on our own street there were two Northern Flickers on show – stunning woodpeckers with a lovely spotted breast. Far, far at the top of a tree (remember, everything’s bigger in North America) was another American Robin singing gustily.

Colony Farm Regional Park

Our second trip out for the day was with a friend from Shetland to Colony Farm park. Situated on the Coquitlam river, there are great views to the snow capped mountains on one side and the Port Mann bridge on the other with a soundscape of birdsong and freight train whistles.

It didn’t take long for me to start lagging behind as I tried to get decent sightings on birds. The first is, I believe, a song sparrow – one of a vast array of New World Sparrows which are rather larger than our Old World Sparrows.

There were swallows flitting above us catching insects and a couple of them had the good grace to perch for a short while so I could see them a little more closely. The barn swallow was particularly obliging, allowing me to get close enough for reasonable photos, a task made more challenging by the fact that the branch was bouncing around in the wind.

Further along we spotted our second yellow bird of the day, this one identified as an American Goldfinch.

The absolute highlight though were the Rufous Hummingbirds. Tiny creatures who beat their wings about 60 times a second and whose hearts can beat 1200 times a minute, getting a close view of one out in the wild is a challenge indeed. This one was on the top of a tree and heavily cropped. It features a stunning ‘gorget’ – a patch of throat feathers which gleam like metal when they catch the light.

Flying

One of the highlights of my trips to Canada in the past was when my uncle would take me flying. Those days are gone, but I’m lucky enough to have a friend who took me up for an evening tour of the greater Vancouver area.

Pre-flight checks

Departing Boundary Bay – after a touch and go

Alex Fraser Bridge

The new Port Mann Bridge – this was under construction on my last visit

Coming in at Langley

GPS log of our route – unfortunately it took a while to lock on.

Vancouver Sun Run – 10K

So, the name gives it away… I was planning to run 10K today. Instead, since the training hasn’t exactly been going to plan, I decided to walk the event instead and consider it training for the 4daagse. And since Mum is out here with me, I dragged her along too for the ride!

The truth of the matter is that despite I always tell everyone that I’m visiting Vancouver, my Grandmother lives in a neighbouring city rather than Vancouver itself, and we very rarely make it downtown. So, it was actually quite good fun to go into Vancouver, first on Saturday to pick up our start numbers, and then again today for the race itself.

We were lucky to have fantastic weather, resulting in an amazing turnout of 51,417 participants. Not for nothing is this billed as Canada’s largest 10K. As walkers, we started in the last group, and didn’t manage to get over the starting line until about 10.30. As the official race start was at 9am, we had a lot of hanging around.

The route took us past the cathedral, and to the tip of Stanley Park, home to the Vancouver Aquarium, which is one of the places we always used to visit when I was a kid, and then primarily along main streets around the edge of town, finishing up at the ice hockey stadium. I couldn’t help but think that if I ever decide to run a marathon, it would be pretty cool to do it in Vancouver. It’s a city that can’t help looking good, with the water and the backdrop of snow covered mountains.

Vierdaagse Training Progress:
Total distance: 79.9km / 49.9mi
Longest walk: 25km / 15.6mi

I’m still looking for my first sponsor for the Vierdaagse! You can sponsor me here: http://www.virginmoneygiving.com/natashahadfield

Northern Flicker

These photos don’t have much to recommend them technically speaking, but I found them a nice series nonetheless. They were taken at 400mm handheld, and have been significantly cropped. A lucky sighting whilst we ate our lunch at a rest area off the Trans Canada Highway.

Lazy Days on Vancouver Island

Road Trip (9): Facts and Figures

Total Distance Travelled: 2295km

Route:
(I messed up with the GPS, so I had to reconstruct this with Google Maps. Note to self – next time, download the track each day…)

Elevation Profile: Golden to just before we rejoined the main highway near Hope and the batteries in the GPS ran out. The coloring of the tracks indicates the direction we were travelling. Generated by www.gpsvisualizer.com.

Vancouver Island

I stayed in New Westminster just long enough to put a load of washing through, and then jumped back into the car and drove over to the ferry terminal at Tsawassen. I arrived with just minutes to spare before the 5pm ferry, and as I rushed through the terminal, and past the seating area at Berth 3, I was reminded of my 2 hour wait there with Grandmere and Janet on the way to Tofino last October.

On that occasion we had a picnic that Janet had brought with her, and ended up sharing it with a couple Toronto lads that we met on the way (a complicated story involving canceled flights, aborted landings, ferries and minivans that I never managed to blog at the time). This time, I was clutching a care package that Grandmere put together whilst I was busy with my laundry – separate baggies of smoked salmon, cheese, dills and crackers, enough protein content to last a week! I found myself a good spot on the outer deck and enjoyed the sun, and the view of the islands. A perfect day for the ferry ride.

Uncle John met me at the other end, and we drove back to his place, where we met up with old friend, Doug, and cousin James. Dinner was at the Blue Nile, an Eritrean restaurant, where by chance I’d eaten before with Jen, on the night of a poetry reading a couple years ago. (This being the poetry reading where I was persuaded to sing with Jen, and we fell about in hysterics in front of a coffee shop full of people. A Canadian style coffee shop. Not a Dutch one….)

Road Trip (8): Back to New Westminster

A quiet morning at the cabin to finish our trip. I went for a run along the dyke – a perfect spot for running, it has beautiful views, is flat, and even has mileposts (well, technically speaking, kilometre posts). Not that I ran further than the first post 🙂 I also had another go at trying to find the geocache which I know is hidden in the woods there. The one Mum, Janet and I hunted for last year. Still didn’t find it.

I planned to visit the Great Blue Heron nature reserve on the way home, but we couldn’t find the way in. Most frustrating. Maybe the next time. Back in along the highway then to New Westminster, the road was packed the whole way home, and we were held up with construction work. A slightly anticlimatic end to the trip.

Road Trip (7): Peachland to The Cabin

It seemed a shame to leave our peaceful lakeshore cabin early this morning, but as we had a long way to travel today, we didn’t have much choice. Nonetheless, we found time to stop and drink a cup of coffee by the lake before we left.

We kept clear of the highways today wherever possible, and found ourselves interesting back roads to travel along. In a country the size of Canada, the most readily available maps show only the major roads, so find a more interesting route is usually a combination of luck and perseverance. We did pretty well, only hitting the occasional dead end, and found ourselves some good routes that wound along the hillside, looking down onto the lake.

Our most interesting road of the day was a single track gravel road, with the sign “no winter maintenance”, which more or less means “enter at your own risk”. We decided to chance it, and found ourselves on a bumpy, potholed track that clung to the edge of the hillside, with a steep drop on the driver’s side down to the lake. Whilst I clung to the steering wheel, and tried to keep us on the road, with tires intact, Grandmere offered the usual, not particularly reassuring commentary appropriate to these occasions – “I hope we don’t meet anyone”, “I hope we don’t have to turn around”. Believe me, I had no plans of either backing up or trying to make a three-point turn up there! When we finally emerged at the other end of the road, I was glad of a “put your foot down and go” drive along the highway for a while.

We made a couple stops along the way – first at a desert information centre near to Peachland, and later at a lakeside bird hide, near to Oliver. We didn’t find many birds at the latter, though we met an interesting gentleman of Ukranian origin, who, finding Grandmere resting on a bench, stopped for a chat.

This whole area is a mixture of sage bush filled desert and rich farming land. Our route took us through the wineries and orchards, and thanks to all the blossom, I sneezed my way through the countryside. We stopped in Oliver at the Burrowing Owl winery, for a tasting and some lunch, which we ate on the restaurant’s balcony, enjoying the sun and the view over the vineyards.

After lunch we found some more backroads, through farm land and wineries, until we ended up in a small town called Keremeos.
Driving through a section of road side stalls, I was amazed to see stall with clogs hanging up. I stopped, looked more closely, and did a double take. The stall had everything Dutch, and then some… Gouda cheese, clogs, Delft blue “stuff” (both china and tack), herring, smoked eel, and a shelf full of Indonesian cooking ingredients, reminiscent of the Albert Heijn. The crowning glory, though, was a section dedicated to drop (nasty licorice sweets, which come in many varieties, and are much loved by the Dutch). I got chatting to the owner – a Dutch lady in her eighties, and she told me that she imports a container of produce from The Netherlands each month. Even, and here she waved a copy at me, the Aller Hande, the free magazine produced by the Albert Heijn supermarket. How many readers it has locally, I wouldn’t like to guess!

Further along the road, we climbed back up into the mountains, and slowly the landscape began to transform into something familiar – mountains, creeks and forests – it was beginning to look like Vedder country. Aside from a few trucks, the road through the mountains was quiet, and we were able to enjoy a last couple hours of peaceful scenic driving. It was some time since Grandmere had last driven along those roads, and she marvelled at the improvement in the road quality since her day. I can imagine that these windy mountain roads were quite sporty 50+ years ago.

At Hope the road rejoined the Trans Canada Highway and we sped long to the Vedder. Although I don’t consider that our trip is officially over until we reach New Westminster, this really felt like the end point – back on familiar territory and in rush hour traffic.