local life

So Friday dawns and we are up, out of our motel and away, Dr Fred is feeling loads better and we head off back into the wilds along highway 5 towards Revelstoke.   We were going to stop for brekkie at Annis Bay but it wasn’t sign posted, (the sign posting everywhere seems particularly bad or we just haven’t got the hang of it yet)…. so we missed it so we stopped at Sicamose a seemingly small inoffensive, very quiet place that was actually gearing up for a full on biker STOMP festival - slowly growing a street market/food scene and expecting loud music and all sorts of biker shenanigans for the next two days.  We wandered around  looking at biker gear shops, potential tattoos,  a vast array of huge bikes and trying to find the elusive visitors centre which never appeared..  there were loads of very big very noisy bikes and tough looking critters over tattooed wearing shorts and easy rider bike hats(pretty grim tbh) wandering around, we decided to sample some street food and stopped at one place for the Canadian specialty of poutaine…. Chips with gravy and cheese. Yummy yummy total bliss after endless salad and beans!!! We chatted to the extremely heavily tattooed woman who served us our chips who told us about the biker fest and was obviously really looking forward to it.  (bikers doing wheelies on harleys behind us) We declined to be part and moved on doing a quick ice shop in the supermarket and then heading off to find a campsite…

communal veg and flower garden

We thought we might go have a coffee on the water front only it wasn’t quite as we hoped it would be so we didn’t bother, but what was nice was all around the town and particularly near where we parked the car were community gardens,  these gardens were growing flowers and vegetable and there were invitations to pick the veg when a notice indicated it was ready and use it for free.  What a lovely idea we picked some lettuce for a salad later that day.

Straeberries for the taking...

Typically, the one campsite we wanted wasn’t evident, the ones on the map either side were signposted but the one we wanted wasn’t!!!  So we carried on and went into the next one.  The woman was very helpful, (everyone in Canada is) she sent us out to find the pitch we wanted but when we drove onto the site it was under construction worse still, once we stepped out of the car we were assaulted by flesh eating mosquitos, I am midway recovering from a prickly heat sun burnt scalp situation and I could face any more bites so we high tailed it outa there .. the next campsite was full and although Freddie was feeling better he still wasn’t 100% so fraughtness was in the air we made the decision to venture out of town to a campsite we had spotted in a book , I must say I was worried if this was full I didn’t want to consider the consequences and so with slight trepidation we headed into the mountain using the sat nav we still haven’t worked out proper to get us onto the right road….. and yes the Martha Creek camping was FULL!!!!! However they were allowing overflow camping on the communal area providing you didn’t hog the picnic table or have a campfire so we were saved!!!! We set up camp and made a good old pg tips cuppa calmed down and then went for a walk along the lake – stunning, and lots of beautiful washed up wood just scattered along the shoreline

water washed wood on lake shoreline

It’s a nice site – and we are camping on grass instead of gravel which is sooooo much nicer for sleeping on we are surrounded by huge forested slopes it’s a bit like Kielder on steroids!!

camping view

 It busy – full of families but still ok, my itchy and scratchy head (prickly heat on my scalp!!!!)is fairly calm, Fred feels slightly better and we had a nice picnic tea sat at the picnic table surreptitiously drinking wine and beer as it is not allowed in public areas… watching the sun drop down below the ridge its all rather grand.

cook at camp kitchen!