Of Chipmunks and Scenery

The awesome scenery just continues and we haven't even hit the real mountains yet!!! We have camped in a couple of fab campsites - very spacious, and all with green tree surrounded private pitches, camp fires - which are currently banned due to the forest fires etc and picnic tables. Last night we were joined by several chipmunks doing entertaining jumps around the place, the night before I thought we had been visited by a bear but I reckon it was just a pesky chipmunk who had eaten the kitchen roll in the trunk of the car! (note native speak there)anyway it reminded us to be more careful next time it might just be a bear. It seems a lot of people are not careful and in fact quite the opposite leading to difficult decision and dead bears.

these bears will be shot :-(

This marvellous mountainous landscape lends itself to amazing waterfalls, I visited Shannon Falls near Squamish which was impressive and then we went to Brandywine falls a bit further up the highway - again impressive such force and enormity of water and it fell into such a huge gorge/valley leading to Daisy lake which was very Canadian with loads of logs floating in it.

Brandywine Falls

The valley Brandywine falls into

It feels quite amazing to be sat out at night in warm temperatures - about 25 degrees the other night- as it grows dark watching all the shadows change, expecting, secretly hoping a bear will pop its head up, preferably over the road so not too close ha ha. As the heat dies down you can really smell the smoky haze which is hanging over the mountains. Yesterday our camp site was high up in the mountains, on a lakeside and feeling the lack of shower facilities I decided to go for a swim in it - it was jolly cold, ok once you got in but by golly it was freezing....

Dr Fred has been quite under the weather for a couple of days, which is a shame and has meant we have been fairly quiet and in active - I did a walk down the side of the Green river - stunning rapids, huge trees right down to the river side, glorious blue skies without a cloud in sight - lots of birds, including huge bald eagles soaring around the sky.

Green river secret tributary

Today ( Thursday) big thunderstorms are forecast so that fact, coupled with the fact that Dr Fred isn't so well, means we have decided to treat ourselves to a hotel for the night, - its a typical motel in a small town just east of Kamloops - the rain will be good for the fires and hopefully a proper bed will put Dr Fred to rights again and I can wash all my sun tan dust off in a glorious hot shower.

We've seen a lot of Canadian freight trains and when I can I turn into a small child and count the trucks todays was 154 trucks we reckoned it was a mile long!!! Actually sadly (killing time in a motel while a thunderstorm rages outside) I have googled it and worked it out. the train we saw was probably 1.6 mile long.... some trains can be 14000 feet long - 2.6 miles I would get bored counting...

RubyStarrs in Paris...

Finally we have made it to Paris. It was a bit of a long travel day - we decided to come by train so we could experience the full glory of British Rail or whatever it's called now which actually delivered perfectly on time... and then the Eurostar which was incredibly disappointing! All that beautiful St. Pancreas Station and the Eurostar is sited in the dungeon... overcrowded, dark, lousy facilitated space... and then the train was an hour late it felt like a long time before we got any fresh air - but eventually we wound up in gay Paree... We navigated the metro and found our airbnb gaff. A mere 70 steps to the fourth floor on a rather lovely winding wooden staircase to a very nice roof top flat which is comfortable and gives a view across a lovely Courtyard with some obviously much posher flats. It's located really centrally about two minutes away from the Opera Garnier so a very good location for getting everywhere...

Funchal

So after three days at sea we finally hit Funchal in Madeira. An escape from the ship, and I have to say it was very pleasant indeed. First of all the weather is really splendid. Especially when you know that everybody else in the UK is suffering grim storms and vile winds.. Over here it is between 22 and 25 degrees is really quite warm. Funchal is a pretty city. It's built on a hill it with lots of lovely white houses with stunning red roofs. In order to get the best of it we walked along the sea front until we got to the cable car and we took it up the hill. It was a really good ride much longer than we imagined and it's quite weird because it goes right through the town - completely over everybody's house... So not only do you get a lovely vista of the bay but you can view the beautiful rooftops and get to look in everybody's gardens and to look at their picnic sets.. clean washing nice plants... scratty backyards.... We got off th

Another Day in Norway where our Trusty Traveller finds Tromsø, Trolls and Totally misses Aurora....

Tromsø - the most northern city on the planet... Its quite a pretty little town with lots of wood fronted shops, but of course like everywhere like this, it is just one big tourist hive and every shop is selling 'indigenous' gifts- didthe Sami make aurora themed mugs and fridge magnets? Nearest I'll get a polar bear (i hope) Although I have to say I did like the big stuffed polar bear and black bear and I am presuming that these are either not real (unlikely) or culled as they sometimes have to be. But most of the stuff is just northern lights tat or Troll tat. Peer Gynt.. famous worldover To be fair the best bit of Tromsø for me was the Troll Museum! We went to the art gallery which was quite interesting (see instagram account) but not astounding, but I always like to look at the local art. We had a mooch around town in the snow and then we went to find the Trolls. This museum was absolutely crazy daft... it was totally dedi

Planet Ruby Starrs

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