SEATTLE - WASHINGTON

31st March - 4th April

Space Needle, Seattle

My trip from Victoria to Seattle was apparently awesome, or 'aaarsum' in the local vernacular, according to some local I met later that evening.  Actually it wasn't; it was a perfectly comfortable and efficient sail on a speedy catamaran, the Victoria Clipper, with a good bar/cafe service and it took 2hrs 40mins. I have noticed, particularly in western Canada, and north-west America that everything is 'aaarsum'. They lazily use this word to cover what we might imply by saying 'OK', or  'jolly good', or 'oh really' or an ironic 'how interesting' . It is the knee-jerk response to any statement of fact or intention.
When asked where I come from and say "England", the response was invariably "aaarsum!". "What did you do today?" answer " I went on a city tour", comment "aaarsum!". "I'm just going to the lavatory"......."aaarsum!" Why do I find this irritating?
I hadn't a clue what to expect of Seattle. All I remembered about the place was that Boeing and Bill Gates' Microsoft have their HQs there. The first thing I realised was that the city is surrounded by water and built around a steep hill. The taxi from quayside to accommodation ( the Green Tortoise, and more about that place later ) had a steep climb to negotiate. Someone must do good business selling brakes and clutches.

Left: The speedy Victoria Clipper.












I booked myself onto a city tour for the next morning. At 0915hrs, prompt, a 30 seater coach rocks up with a driver, wearing a cowboy hat, called Moviere ( call me Mov ). That was it! Just me and Mov. He was a rather serious young man and asked me what I wanted to see. How was I to know! I thought he was supposed to tell me. I wish there had been some others there. Off we set and he told me that Seattle got it's name from a misspelling of the local Native American ( that's the American PC version of Indian ) chief's name. I suspected he was a bit 'PC' himself so I tested him by saying that in England we call Native Americans 'redskins'. He nearly fainted. So I think we established a mutual suspicion of each other. OK, he took me on a 1.5 hour, rather serious, tour. I learnt that Starbucks was started here and they have 416 outlets in the city. I was shown the enormous fishing fleet presently in harbour and from where the salmon and crabbing boats go off to Alaska in the summer and autumn. The crab fishing in the Bering Sea is particularly arduous and dangerous ( and presumably profitable ). I was given lots of background gen on the city and many of it's buildings. I won't bore you with it.
I was shown the locks on the canal connecting Lake Union to the sea at Puget Sound. I told him I lived next to a lock in London but that didn't stop him giving me a blow by blow account of how it worked. Also the salmon ladder. I told him I had seen one in action at Dunkeld. He had a script and he was damned well going to stick to it.
I asked him what he did for a hobby. He said he read lots of books and was due to start to a course in Human Sciences ( whatever that is ) at Washington University. He informed me that it rained on average  250 days of the year in Seattle ( ie not as much as Ireland ). It was indeed raining on our little tour. I felt well briefed and orientated and ready to sally forth on foot. He was due to do another tour in the afternoon and I hope he got a better audience.




Left: The fleet of salmon and crab fishing boats waiting in harbour. They set sail up the 'inner passage' to Alaska in June. The memorial is for those sailors who have been 'lost at sea' on these ventures and there have been many

Right: The Fremont Troll. Under the Fremont road bridge ( trolls like living under bridges as you know ). This was 'installed' after a competition and was only meant to be temporary, but the people liked it and it stayed.









Left: Another amusing statue. People waiting at a bus stop.









As mentioned earlier, I booked into a sort of backpackers' hostel called The Green Tortoise. A girl on the Victoria Clipper told me about it. A private, ie single, room cost $60 per night although they said they didn't have any currently available. It was $30 or less if you shared a room. I told the charming be-noseringed receptionist that I could not possibly share a room because it was very dangerous. When she asked why I said that I had been told ( by a most unreliable source, I hasten to add ) that when I slept I often sounded like a manic starving pig at feeding time and that I had previously driven a fellow room-mate to attempt to murder me. They kindly put me in a room for four by myself ( $60 ). It turned out to be a fantastic place and great fun. It was in a prestigious location next to the touristy Pike Street Market. It was clean, safe and had a most interesting and delightful collection of guests and extremely helpful staff. They had wi-fi throughout, free cook-your-own breakfast, unlimited coffee etc all day, free curry suppers on 4 nights a week and, importantly, unrivalled knowledge and literature on travelling just about anywhere. They also organised 'adventure tours' but normally for people about 35 years younger than me. It was great value and, for what it's worth, I strongly recommend the place . I suppose you can look it up on the internet.

Seattle famously hosted the International Fair in 1962. It already had it's Space Needle tower and it built a park containing many state-of-the-art exhibits and museums called the Seattle Centre around it, with a mono-rail to connect it to the city centre. It was all cutting-edge stuff at the time. I felt obliged to go up the Space Needle. Good views after a bit of a queue.




Right: A view from the Space Needle looking south over the city centre and quayside.

Left: A part of the Seattle Centre. These weird buildings house the museums of music and sci-fi. They were designed for the 1962 International Fair  by the chap ( Frank Gehry? ) who designed the equally weird Guggenheim museum in Bilbao.

Right: In the music museum, the Guitar Tree. The museum featured pop music historical items and an 'inter-active' make your own pop music centre, plus a Jimmy Hendrix exhibition.
Wow. How cool is that?















Left:...........and a special Battlestar Galactica display. All the old models, costumes and props from the various TV and film series. I don't remember watching it.

Right: The driver's eye view from the mono-rail train. It only runs from the City centre to the Seattle Centre, a 1min 90secs journey.

Left: I was lucky enough to visit the Centre on 'International Pillow-Fighting Day' ( 2nd April ). It had completely escaped my attention.











Right: They seemed to enjoy their mass pillow-fight. All very good humoured. In England it would probably have involved drunken football fans and anarchists with the attendant riot squad and ambulances.








The 'downtown' area, especially along the quayside ( Elliott Bay ) was most jolly with lots of quaint bars, a 'farmers market', restaurants and shops, some very expensive ones, plus 'entertainers' who mostly did musical things, although one chap had a remarkably talented and amusing parrot which did alarming tricks. In general it was a pleasant city with lots of entertainment for us tourists.







 Left and below: Various 'Artistes' around the Pike Street Market. The musicians were rather good.

........although what this bloke, left, was trying to achieve rather escaped me. It may have been an undercover policeman keeping an eye on things. I did actually go up to him and commend him on his dress sense.










The high spot for me was undoubtedly 'Riding the Ducks'. Perhaps I'm the last person in the world to experience this. The concept is simple; it is a guided tour in an amphibious vehicle, the 1942 built military DUKW. It has, however, become not so much just a tour as a 'Tour de Force', a 'Mad Performance Comique' and amusing, indeed I thought hysterically funny, for both children and adults. We were encouraged to buy 'quackers', yellow duck beak shaped things that quacked when you blew them. Our driver/compere/guide, dressed in 'ship's' uniform introduced himself, loudly, as Captain 'Tristan Shout'. He was wild. He gave a guided tour, but it involved 'relevant' rock music, him changing hats to suit the locale, he sang, he danced in his seat ( hands rarely on the steering wheel because he was 'hand-jiving' energetically ), he told appalling jokes, he ordered us to wave at bemused pedestrians and when to blow our quackers, which we did in unison. We drove around the streets and sailed through Lake Union. It could not possibly happen in the UK ( or Canada for that matter ). PC Plod would take one look and immediately arrest the driver for an aggravated case of ' dangerous driving' and possibly ' wilful intent to kill members of the public'. The UK 'Elf 'n' Safety Gestapo would never in a month of Sundays allow this cronky-looking old vehicle to sail into a choppy lake with 30 giggling passengers on board. Anyway, they can and do here. Another example of American enterprise and fun and stuff the spoil-sports ( although I am sure Capt Shout knew exactly what he was about and the thing was entirely safe ). It was indeed 'aaarsum'.




Right: The 'Duck'. They must have had about 10 of them and they appeared always to be full up and were obviously very popular.

Left: Some Duck Riders getting in a bit of quacking practice before the off. Around the start point there was just a faint reminiscence of those blasted Vuvuzelas!

Right: Difficult to capture the whackiness of all this. Rear view of the irrepressible Capt Tristan Shout..........

.......and him moving seamlessly into nautical mode.

Right: A fellow vessel moving along-side.














Left: A float-plane just about to take off, crossing our bows. I have no idea who had right of way over whom or who was controlling all this! It seemed to work without mishap.













Right: Not much margin for error if these planes have an engine problem.







OK, packing my bags and moving on. The girl in the Green Tortoise even helped me carry my stuff down several flights of stairs ( no lifts ). I think she probably thought that I was too geriatric to manage myself and I suppose I did rather increase the average age of the clientele. She was probably also grateful that no murders had taken place on her watch. I gave her a little snort as I left.

  As a post-script, I am going to try to attach a 'video clip' of the crazy Capt Tristan Shout. It works at this end but, if my previous attempt at these clips is anything to go by, it won't work when 'posted'. It is an experiment. If anyone can offer assistance it would be appreciated. Maybe these blog things do not accept video clips.

VANCOUVER ISLAND - BRITISH COLUMBIA

28th - 31st March 2011

Parliament Building, Victoria, British Columbia

From Vancouver City to Vancouver Island by ferry. It was a 35 min bus ride to the ferry port, a 1.5 hour ( Ro-Ro ) ferry crossing and a further 40 mins to Victoria, the Capital City of British Columbia. I was eating a rather overpriced and not very good lunch on the ferry and passing some small islands, trying to read my book, when there was a crashingly loud announcement from 'The Captain' which, being in Canadian, I only partially understood. I heard the words "killer whales" and everybody got up and ran to one side of the ship. "Bloody hell", I thought, "these things must be dangerous". I packed up quick and joined them wondering where the life-jackets were stored. I was told to calm down because this, apparently, is a normal happening to look at some large black and white fish ( Orcas or whatever ). Phew! Nobody saw any sign of them anyway. I imagined the Captain was just having a bit of fun; we would soon hear "killer whales" on the other side, no doubt. I subsequently learnt that 'whale watching' is a popular tourist activity in these parts.
Victoria is a pleasant town ( hardly a city ) with a deliberately British feel to it. The weather was mild and there was even drizzle for most of the time to make me feel at home. It has a picturesque harbour and lots of pubs ( yes, including a large Irish one with live and loud music ) and restaurants and a pretty park. A little bit like a clean version of Bournemouth perhaps, without the drunks. It is the capital of BC due to the fact that it was the first place colonised on the west coast of Canada, in the mid-19th century. Messrs Cook and Vancouver had a bit to do with it. There were/are many Indian ( called 'First Nation Peoples' by the politically correct Canadians ) throughout the area. This part of the Indian nation specialised in totem poles. There are thousands of them, all over the place!
My first night there I met up with the daughter of a cousin of mine ( thanks Nadine ) and her friends and we had a jolly good drink with fish and chips in a 'Scottish' pub. Almost felt like Blighty.




Left: The Empress Hotel, between the harbour and Parliament buildings. It is very luxurious and famous for it's 'British Afternoon Tea' which is vastly expensive and which nobody in Britain does any more.










Right: I caught 'Her Majesty' paying a fleeting visit to meet a couple of her 'First Nation Peoples' friends for a quick drink in the Empress Hotel. Maybe she was dishing out invites for The Wedding, which is a popular topic of conversation here.

Left: A selection of some of the ubiquitous totem poles. I suppose they were popular because of the availability of large trees on the Island. 

Talking of which, the logging industry in BC, and Vancouver Island in particular, is vast, although not as big as it was. It is difficult to describe the enormous scale of forestry, mainly Douglas Fir, Cedar and Pine, in the area. I guess that about 2/3 of the Island is forested and very hilly or mountainous. The Island is about 350 miles long by 120 miles wide ( not much smaller than England ), and unspoilt with masses of space. The total population of the Island is about 1 million.





Right: Runway conditions: wet.wet.wet. A bustling float-plane commuter service operates between the Island and mainland Vancouver, and Seattle.








The tourist season had not yet started, although I found several places advertising the, yawn, 'whale watching' cruises. These involve a 3 hour trip ( $99 ) in a semi-rigid boat getting thoroughly wet with, at this time of year, a 50:50 chance of seeing a pesky Orca or Humpback whale and maybe a 60:40 chance of getting seasick. No thanks! Why not stay at home in comfort and watch the goldfish through a magnifying glass? Also other trips on offer; 'bear watching' Grizzlies, despite the fact that they were mostly still in hibernation ( best place for them if you ask me ), or perhaps a 30 min flight around the local area ( $130 ) in a float-plane assuming that at least 3 other people turned up. So I resisted the temptation. I did not notice any 'Mounty watching' trips. They probably, wisely, don't like being gawped at by tourists.
There were, however, what looked like some excellent salmon fishing trips on offer, but not at this time of year. I subsequently discovered, from the people I was staying with, that there are fantastic outdoor things to see and do in the area but, as always, it is best to take advice from them that know rather than the money motivated tour operators.
I was going to travel about 50 miles north by train to the town of Duncan, to visit my cousin and her husband ( P and J ). Unfortunately the train was not operating due to track maintenance, so I went by a bus replacement. As it turned out it was a more speedy service. I first went all the way up to a place called Quanticum Beach and stayed there for lunch. The place is in a 1950s British time-warp! Very old fashioned but utterly charming.  The countryside was spectacularly beautiful; lakes, rivers and wooded hills.



Left: Victoria Central Station. Not quite on the scale of the Grand Union in NY........and the train wasn't running anyway.















Right: .........and a similar model in Quanticum Beach.
















Left: This was at the station in Duncan ( pop. 5,000 approx ) which, I was informed, had no less than 180 totem poles in town







I was generously entertained by P and J and taken on a local tour by J, who is retired from the logging/forestry industry. He will have to pass as my token 'lumberjack' although, sadly, he was not properly dressed in the correct lumberjacket. I was shown some majestic lakes and rivers where fish abound ( and told of some spectacular salmon fishing elsewhere ) and given a fair insight into the trees and machines and techniques of the logging industry. I learnt that they gave up floating the logs down the rivers, leaping from tree to tree ( as per M Python & Co ), a long time ago. How disappointing. I was also driven through a 'First Nation People's' ( Indian to you and me ) reservation. It is a bit sad. They are given many tax-breaks ( including the running of casinos ) and grants and other financial assistance by the government but choose, it seems, to live on these 'reservations' in abject squalor in what looked to me like rat infested junk yards where alcohol and drug abuse is rife. There must be notable exceptions, but the majority do not seem to wish to assimilate into the 1st world. I also noted ( as I did in Winnipeg ) a barely concealed antipathy towards these people.
I was taken, voluntarily, to the local police station. I was determined to track down a Mounty ( 'the Man always gets his Mounty' is my motto ). When we got there I was told that only the previous day a troop of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had been 'on parade' in full dress at some civic function in town. Nobody had warned me!
To make amends, and probably just to get rid of me, they wheeled out a Mounty in 'working' dress. He was called Craig and was most charming.  I think he said he had just been on a holiday in Edinburgh.



Left: One of the old steam engines that transported the logs. They did not go fast but could climb serious gradients.













Right: Craig, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in working dress. So, I now have my genuine Mounty photo.............










......although I would have preferred something a bit more like this.















.............but not like this!















I spent an afternoon in the museum in Victoria. It was quite smart and held some interesting bits and pieces. Bizarrely, the central exhibit in the entrance foyer was the Yellow Rolls-Royce which had belonged to John Lennon in the 60s ( his 'Yellow Submarine' with a double bed in the back ). As you can imagine there was quite a large section devoted to the Indians, sorry 'First Nation Peoples', although not so dramatic as that in the ROM in Toronto, and another plethora of effing totem poles. By now I was getting a tad bored of totem poles.




Left: John Lennon's old Roller. He had remarkably good taste didn't he?. Not sure what it is that is jumping up and down on the bonnet.













      Right: A genuine Indian ( of the Bombay tribe ) guiding us up the escalator.











Left: Indigenous Canadian animals. It saved me going on an 'animal watching' tour.












 Right: At last, a beaver. I do not know why it was holding a label. Must be the price tag on it's coat.

Left: A Grizzly, thoroughly hibernated. Much the best way to see them I think.
















Right: A woolly mammoth. I took this photo because it was there, and you don't see many of them around nowadays.













Left: A rather amusing statue by the harbour in Victoria called  'The Homecoming'.












Right: ...and a fond farewell to P and J and Mr Nemo in Duncan. They were just making sure I left the property.









So, I just about got my pics of the Mounty, lumberjack, sledge with husky, beaver, snowshoe and canoe. I was quite impressed by Canada and the Canadians. They are a civilised lot but, for better or for worse, without the eccentricities of the Americans ( or Brits for that matter ).

I was now heading back to the land of Uncle Sam and perhaps to re-kindle my relationship with jolly old Amtrac. ...............onwards and downwards.

THE CANADIAN - TORONTO TO VANCOUVER

24th - 28th March 2011

The Canadian. Front end.

Well, this was something a bit special. Boarded the 'VIA' train in Toronto, Union Station, at 2200hrs on Thursday 24th. The station is a 'Grand' building, but with utterly crap facilities. My advice; don't, as I did, get there too early. Stay in the Royal York Hotel, just opposite, for an expensive pre-journey snifter. The train, however, was in a different league. It was named 'The Canadian' and on the surface looked a bit like one of the wriggley-tin Amtrac broncos, but it was a clever deception. The carriages were indeed built in USA, in the 1950s. They have been beautifully refurbished ever since. They are solid, and stylish inside, and the ride, whether due to straighter rail-track or better suspension, or both, was smoother and quieter. I had a comfortable cabin/bed and there was a pleasant 'lounge car' ( called the Park Car for some reason ) and an adjoining 'bar car' ( essential ) right at the back of the train so you could look back down the line you had just passed, with an upstairs observation room to see all around. Each accommodation carriage seemed to have it's own steward. Further forward there was also a smart dining car with real flowers on the tables with 'proper' chairs and the food, breakfasts, lunches and dinners, was superb. I was told they also had a 'gym' ( swear-word ) on board, but I never bothered to investigate that.

We were welcomed aboard by a sort of 'master of ceremonies' called Dennis with champagne and canapes and given an amusing briefing on the facilities and the journey ahead. After each town where passengers were embarked we got more of the same! He was our 'host' and 'barman' and resident 'expert' and provided considerable amusement ( he could easily have been irritating, but he wasn't! ). It was not difficult to be quite impressed. Some of us were going to be together for almost 5 days, 4016 kms ( 2410 miles ), and 3 time zones west.

Left: The Lounge Car. Free tea, coffee, 'juice' ( whatever that is ), cookies, newspapers etc on offer all day. The Bar Car is just in front. The stairs lead up to the Observation Car.

Right: Upstairs in the Observation Car. I think it is the 'mad lady' with her back to us on the left. Her hair looked like she had plugged herself into the mains. Maybe she had. Or somebody else had. ( details somewhere below ).

Left: The Dining Car where many interesting, if enforced, conversations took place. There were two waiters, I think French Canadian who, given the chance, sang and played guitars. On two occasions at dinner they burst into song and even got an 'encore'. They were actually quite good. I have my doubts whether this behaviour would catch on at home.

Right: The redoubtable Lawrence ( on the left ).










Woke up the next morning for a leisurely breakfast as we were passing through the pine, spruce and silver birch forests of Ontario ( flat, flat, flat ) heading west and north-west around the Great Lakes. The social significance of the dining car became swiftly apparent. You were seated, no argument, by the head-waiter, at a table with other occupants. How awful. After an embarrassed and muttered "good morning" and all pointedly looking out of the window to avoid eye contact it was impossible, eventually, not to start up some form of conversation. This proved remarkable fun. It formed amusing short term friendships and was often rather educational. You, we all, felt you had nothing to lose by telling 'your story' in the almost certain knowledge that you would never ever again see or hear from the others after the journey's end! One got to know lots of unnecessary details of complete strangers' lives.

Amongst several others, I met a delightful retired engineer and his wife, Val and Marianne. He had emigrated from Co. Down in 1953 where he had worked in the old Harland & Wolfe shipyards and was surprised that I immediately noticed his 'Norn Iron' accent. They were travelling to see their daughter in Edmonton, Alberta - no, the Province, not his daughter's name. He had a great line in jokes ( similar to you Christian! Are you following this? ). There was a tall, stunningly attractive and rather mysterious lady with a German accent whom several tried very hard to sit next to. It eventually transpired that she was a singer called Ingrid, and did so, a la Marlene Dietrich, one night in the 'bar car'!
Then there was Lawrence McAllister. He became my temporary 'new best friend'. This guy was almost unbelievable. He was born in August 1919 ( ie now 92 years old ). He was travelling alone to visit his son, a professor of English at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. He might have been 92 but he was far from being a doddery geriatric. He had done this trip every year for the past 5 years and next year, he triumphantly announced, as a 'preferred customer' he was getting the ride free. He displayed absolutely no senile tendencies ( unlike me, he didn't dribble ) at all! He was smartly dressed, had a razor sharp memory, a quick wit, was articulate, completely mobile ( not even a stick ), fantastic sense of humour, ate like a horse and was enjoying himself enormously! He was most amusing.  He was reading an 'Andy McNab' book which slightly detracted from his image. Anyway, he had been a steward on a Canadian '4 stacker' ( HMCS Columbia ) destroyer in WW2 on anti-submarine duties. He recalled, in detail, visiting Londonderry and Plymouth in 1941, and seeing King George V1 at Plymouth visiting Lord Mountbatten on HMS Kelly. Plymouth was bombed during one of his visits. He said he hid under a stack of ropes. After the war he became a mining engineer ( Gypsum in Nova Scotia ) and then did missionary work in Iryan Jaya ( other half of Papua New Guinea ). I thought they ate the missionaries there. Not enough meat on Lawrence perhaps. Lots more stories, but it gives you the idea! .............and many other characters. I must mention one rather odd lady ( well, not mincing words, completely bonkers ) who is a renowned habitue, according to Dennis, on western Alberta trains. She had alarming hair and wild staring eyes and moaned and was apparently in continuous but hopeless search of a long-lost lover, reputedly a British cavalry officer. Luckily, I didn't meet her in the dining car. Lots of social gatherings and chats over a drinks ensued ( not with her, might I add ).

The journey took us through Ontario via Sudbury and Armstrong and Sioux Lookout , which was snow covered, flat and forested, through Manitoba,  snow covered flat prairie, via Potage La Prairie with a 4 hour stop at Winnipeg ( as mentioned  previously ), through Saskatchewan via Melville and Saskatoon, again more flat snow covered prairie punctuated by vast Potash mines ( Manitoba/Saskatchewan produce 25% of the world's potash, said Dennis ). Then into Alberta via Wainwright, a stop in Edmonton and at the touristy town of Jasper. The countryside was beginning to get very hilly by now. Then through the spectacularly mountainous and forested Rocky Mountains. Finally into the Fraser River valley and on into Vancouver with a totally different, mild and damp ( oceanic ) climate. Many small settlements, just a handful of houses/shacks were passed en-route almost unnoticed. When the original railway was built ( 1 Chinaman dead for every mile someone told me; but I think that was just through the Rockies! ) the steam engines needed coal and water re-supply every 120 miles, so that is why these settlements exist where they do. Some became 'trading' stations and others, now, are popular with 'hunters', fishermen and skiiers etc. There were many amusing settlement names, often of Indian origin. I was told, by the 'Norn Iron' guy's wife, that there is a place called 'Smash Head-In Buffalo Drop', so called because there is a precipice there over which the Indians stampeded the buffalo to kill them! Cunning.


Left: Going through typical Ontario forest. Interestingly, there is only single line track for much of the route which entailed waiting on the 2 track bits for freight trains to pass. Canadian Pacific run most of the freight trains which take precedence ( big money ) over the VIA passenger trains. I didn't care. No rush. A freight train, and  I counted a few through, consisted on average of 120 trucks of approx 80ft long each. Therefore, by my reckoning, a train was about 1.8 miles long.  They were big.





Right: Winnipeg, Manitoba. Only here for a pit-stop. It looked a pretty dull place. I hunted unsuccessfully for a re-supply of beer, and was told, in a wine shop ( wine no problem ), that the Government strictly controls the beer and spirits supply. Only one Gov't shop in town and it was a long way away. Something to do with old laws stopping people getting hold of alcohol. Or maybe the Gov't making money? This specifically applied to the old Indian population who developed a rather unhealthy appetite for the pale-faces' fire-water. I was told that there still is a big problem in this area, plus drugs of course. Sounds familiar?  



I went to the local shopping 'Mall' near the station called 'The Forks'. It was the old trading station on the Red River where trading was done with the local Indians. Probably with fire-water in those days, but bugger-all now! They are/were predominantly Cree Indians here. On a tourist info board ( see left ) the details were in three languages; the middle one is Cree. Lots of them still in the area, I was told ( probably by Dennis ).

Right: Out over the prairies of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. I forgot to take a photo of a Potash mine, you will be disappointed to hear. Saskatchewan was settled by many Ukrainians and was a 'temperance' state, well before the prohibition era ( according to Dennis ).











Left: At a brief stop-over in Jasper, Lawrence took the chance to paddle his 'canoe'. OK, so I now have a photo of a canoe, sort of.

 A British couple, David and Netta, from the Isle of Man joined the train at Jasper. They were on a 'world tour' having got fed up with running their business in UK ( the petty regulations eventually got to them and they sold up ). They had been to many interesting places including Banff where they had ridden on Husky powered sledges. David had even 'mushed' his own sledge. I was seriously jealous. They probably saw a Mounty as well.




Right and below: Several shots approaching, and in, the Rockies. Pretty damed fine countryside. I was all eyes to spot a moose, but didn't. The bears were ( as Dennis pointed out ) still sleeping..... along with the Mounties presumably.
I saw sheep and deer and the occasional elk. Not very exciting. Lawrence told me that there were plenty of Moose in Newfoundland where he worked at the mines. Well, that was not much use!
He also told us a lot about all the rock formations.






At some point during this journey Dennis organised a sort of 'pub quiz'. I happened to be there. Lots of Canadian ice-hockey type questions. He also asked "what is the surname of the two brothers in the British Labour Party, one of whom now leads it?". Do you know, I had completely forgotten. Plus "what is Tony Blair's autobiography called?". I didn't know that either. I was not much help.






Right: The 'Seven Sisters' mountains.















Left: An elk's arse. In Jasper, I think.














Right: Mount Robson ( partially hidden by cloud ). This is the highest peak in the Rockies at, I think, 15,000ft. Dennis told us, but I might have got it wrong. Quite high anyway. People like to climb it for some reason.











Left: The Pyramid Falls. They look more dramatic in summer when the ice has melted, said Dennis.

Right: OK, here is a photo of a Husky and a sledge and the chap at the right of the picture is carrying some snowshoes. This is, however, a photo of a post-card. It is as close as I am likely to get by the look of things. I'm still feeling jealous of David from the IOM.

Left: A bad photo of the ever patient Dennis serving 'nibbles' to what looks like a bloke with a weird toupee. His face is blurred, he must have had a bit to drink.

The Canadian. Back end.

And finally into Vancouver. This is the back of The Canadian.

So, if you want my humble opinion, the train across Canada was a terrific experience and a very civilised and comfortable way to see a lot of the country. Of course, who your fellow travellers are is a bit of a lottery and all part of the mistique I suppose. Fortunately they seemed to put up with me. There were, as far as I am aware, no murders or defenestrations en-route. There might have been I suppose. Ask Dennis.

......onwards onwards. I have to catch a ferry to Victoria on Vancouver Island.

WINNIPEG - MANITOBA

24th - 26th March 2011

This is a 4 hour 'pit-stop' in Winnipeg on the way to Vancouver. Winnipeg seems to have bugger-all to offer ( in 4 hours ), but the train is magnificent! It is called 'The Canadian'. Whoops! Must dash as, after a long and unsuccessful walk to replen my beer supply, they are now calling for us to re-board. No internet on train so more to follow....... later.