Category Archives: city

city, family, history, UK

Bristol Stroll

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It was a surprisingly easy two hour drive up to Bristol last night. I’m staying with third cousins here for two nights as tomorrow I’m meeting up with friends and finally heading out for a ski this winter.

With a proper chilly start to the day, I was well chufffed to see a brilliant blue sky.  After a lazy morning including sleeping in, entertaining the kids, drinking tea and eating copious amounts of coffee cake, behind us – we headed out for me to be shown around Bristol.

Driving past the Downs (strangely on the top of the hill) I heard of the city’s profiting from the slave trade, which is reflected in such placenames as White Lady Road & Black Boy Hill. Down to underneath the famous Clifton Suspension Bridge we were following the Avon up to the old docks.

I was intrigued that there was such a thing as a free parking lot so close to town. But there was and soon the kids were in the buggy and the manic dog was running in circles as we wandered into the centre of town taking our time to feed ducks that weren’t skating on the ice. As I got sidetracked by old cranes and trains on the dockside and there were plenty of people also out enjoying the sunshine, it was a little while before we finally sat down for lunch.

The sun was sinking as we emerged for the return trip, which was quite chilly as we strolled at a Dotty (two year old) pace back to the car, curiously bumping into Ollie’s brother and his family heading the other direction. Now we are back at home and I’m sat in front of a roaring fire with tea and more cake watching The Princess Bride, all is well.

(Annoyingly, my shoulder operation has been pushed back a month.)



city, family, friends, London, UK

London trips

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For the first time in my life, I’ve finally been able to start biking to work. But a five kilometre round trip is not all that much & is especially helped by it being a lot flatter than it seems in the car – which is quite the reverse of what I was expecting. So it may be closing in on the longest day of the year, but if it’s not raining & I get up early enough to get organised, a ride to work (even if it just one or two degrees above freezing – thanks Canada for not making me avoid the “cold”) is a nice little start to the day.

Last weekend was a trip up to London for Levi & Marki’s Christmas party. Always good catching up with them & there was plenty of food too. Also pretty fun catching up with a buddy from high school who I hadn’t seen about twelve years – I thought I’d got away from Canadians telling me to watch Trailerpark Boys, but it turns out Jeff is a bit of a fan too. There was no playing football on the deck with an offcut from the woodwork shop, but then the deck at the apartment is a little small & had more important duties as the beer fridge. Somehow I managed to walk out (just managed to walk onto the last train too, thus avoiding my first ever night-bus) with a huge ham – apparently I was the most worthy cause as Levi & Marki weren’t going to get the chance to eat it with travelling on the cards.

Around Sidcup on the weekend was pretty relaxing, on the way to visit Ray & Jill on Saturday morning Trish & I paid a visit to Rudolph’s buddies & their spindly looking antlers.  I’m sure they would still do a bit of damage.

Even after a big sleep in, Sunday was looking pretty grey so Trish & I decided to head out to another little Kentish village – Westerham – to check out Quebec House. After a nice lunch in one of those great English pubs that look like they’re doing a commendable impression of a drunk trying to stand up, we strolled through the village to check out the house. It was the birthplace of General Wolfe – who was apparently the first English military figure to be a popular hero. The name of the house comes from the name of the victorious battle that won him his fame & took his life. All very Nelsonesque – except Wolfe pre-dated him. I’d learnt a little about the battle that saw the British defeat the French in the war for control of Quebec City & Canada when I was at Buckler’s Hard a couple of weeks ago – some of the ships built there sailed to Quebec before the battle. Always interested to get a bit more Canadian history, the museum above the coachhouse had great displays & was very informative. The house was pretty dark inside, but had some interesting period pieces – muskets are pretty heavy it turns out.

I was back in London three days later for yet another appointment about my bung shoulder. So I’ll get keyhole surgery sometime next year – I asked for after-February so I can go skiing at least once this winter. As it’s been three months to get this far, I’m hoping that’s a safe request. I’ll be out of action for a while (six weeks in a sling) with no driving & definitely not biking – but it’ll be nice to get it fixed up & hopefully avoid the agony of the last dislocation repeating. So 2012 doesn’t look like it’ll be so active – but perhaps I’ll finally get around to seeing some more of Europe, which I think was the whole idea of leaving NZ two & a half years ago. Oops.

bikes, Canada, city, family, friends, hiking, MTB, national park, roadtrip, travel, USA, vehicles

Back to Canmore – Roadtrip Complete

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To finish off the three months of driving I decided to drive all the way back from Vancouver to Canmore in the middle of the long weekend. The logic there being that Jasper would be a zoo on a sunny holiday weekend & I’d be better off checking it out a little later when there were less people around.

So Saturday morning I set off on a wonderfully sunny drive east across BC. The traffic was pretty good & BC was beautifully forested – it really is a large province when you drive across the bottom in one day. After Kamloops I was back on roads I’d driven before & there was a half-hour wait near Shuswap – but I had the Kindle out so I wasn’t too fussed. Over Rogers Pass & coming into Golden there was an ominous big cloud of black smoke billowing into the sky. I was near the front of a queue for almost an hour as some poor family watched their RV incinerate. The rest of the drive was uneventful & I was soon driving below familiar peaks – just they had a lot less snow (almost none) on them than I remember. It was a little odd getting closer to Canmore – being away for three months & doing so many other things must have lessened the blow of leaving such a great place as I wasn’t too concerned that I’ll be gone in three weeks.

So that was it really, just under 22000 km, 87 days, 13 states, two provinces, 45 MTB rides totalling a thousand kilometres, at least 15 National Parks & 5 National Monuments, only 2600 photos & 435 gallons of gas. What a great trip! We were blessed by the weather – notably it never got really hot, as it did the last time I visited Utah, Nevada, Arizona & California in 2009.  Highlights are hard to list as there were so many. But I’ll try anyway:

A separate list for the riding highlights, which is even harder as I rode so much quality singletrack.

That’s that – thanks again Valerie for coming along for the ride & sharing the experience (& financing a lot of it too!).  I’m in Canmore until mid-August before flying back to London to catch the last of the English summer.  Mum’s coming across to England for the last few months of the year, so it’ll be great to see her & plenty of other friends & family in the UK.  From then on, I only have vague ideas as to what I’m going to do with myself… But riding better figure in there somehow.

Canada, city, family, friends, hiking, roadtrip, travel

No rain in Vancouver

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For a whole week I was in Vancouver & I didn’t see it rain once. I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. With mild summer temperatures it was quite pleasant. Valerie & I spent a bit of time Wednesday & Thursday on the North Shore doing pleasant little walks & enjoying the sun. Karin & I caught the final installment of Harry Potter one evening in the city – it really is a very good conclusion to the series & the 3D adds something extra.

Thursday night I said goodbye to my traveling buddy as Valerie flew off back to Sydney. It’ll be a huge shock for her to go back to work after thirteen weeks. It was great to have someone to share the such a large trip with & we really did see a lot & have some great memories – plus having a shuttle driver for my MTB rides was a huge bonus.

Karin took Friday off work for an extra long long-weekend & we tossed around various ideas for a hike close to town. The forecast was good, but the morning started off with a shroud of cloud covering the city. We eventually decided on walking to Eagle Bluffs from the Cypress ski area to hopefully get a good view of the city & out to Vancouver Island. The trail started by climbing steeply up to the top of the ridge & Black Mountain. There was a lot of snow to cross as we approached the ridge, walked along it & then went down the west side for forty minutes before reaching the bluffs. There were a few small ponds around doing their job of looking pretty well.

We did get out on the bluffs for a good view of the surrounds. It was still a little hazy, so the photos don’t show nearly as much as we actually saw. The clouds came & went & were replaced by various others, but it was worth the walk as most of the time on the top of the ridge we had clear blue skies.

From a bit further down the hill on the drive home

We took a slightly different route back to the car & were down after about four hours in total. After resting for a little while we pulled bikes out & went off in to the city to meet a couple of Karin’s friends to watch the sunset from Kits beach. The skytrain took us half way there & we had a very pleasant forty minute ride around the waterfront to the beach where we grabbed some sushi. After sitting & chatting on the beach for too long, it was rather dark for our return trip but we managed not to knock anyone over of get hit ourselves. A very fun little outing to cap the day off.