The past two years have gone very quickly and we still can’t quite believe that we are writing this final Canadian post from the UK. Perhaps it will sink in once the jetlag fades.

Our last week was pretty busy. Rosie still had to do a few days work as well as clearing our apartment ready to hand the keys over before our flight. After arriving in Canada with two big backpacks and two small backpacks, we had managed to accumulate a whole apartment’s worth of stuff. After lots of selling, donating and some binning (sorry planet!) we got back down to the two big backpacks and two small backpacks… and one giant suitcase and a guitar. Some arguments were had over what was necessary to pack. E.g. like many others during the pandemic, we have loved making sourdough, so Rosie was sure to dehydrate and pack our sourdough starter (split from Hannah’s original one) to take home… Spoiler alert: we made it through security/customs with no questions asked.

Although we could have spent all week cleaning, we did make the most of some lovely sunny (but chilly) days. At the weekend, we persuaded a group of friends to have a farewell BBQ on the beach. It looked warm, but it was not. We were the only ones dining alfresco. We forgot to take a group photo, but there is a shot of four of us trying to warm up with a game of petanque.

On Monday evening, we went to the Cypress Nordic area for some last cross-country skiing. This was the first time we had gone just the two of us and Ollie made Rosie cry by trying to do a run that was far too steep. She hasn’t cried cross country skiing with others, so it is clearly all Ollie’s fault.

Tuesday was Ollie’s 31st birthday. We started the day with a free breakfast (free for Ollie at least) at Denny’s. Then, while Rosie went back to work, Ollie did some outdoor climbing with Thom at Lighthouse Park. Their fingers were pretty sore after.

Wednesday was full of cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning, then saying goodbye to our car and the friends we sold it to. It snowed overnight, so Thursday morning was very pretty. It had all melted by the afternoon when we went for a final walk to say goodbye to the sea wall and for a last lunch with Thom and Hannah before our flight. Thom gave us a miniature model of the barge that he had 3D printed! We love this gift, along with a print of a map of the North Shore mountains which some other friends gave us. An update on the barge: as you can see it is still there. It is looking like it will have to be dismantled and removed in pieces. Hopefully someone will remember to send us updates on any barge action now that we are not there to see it.

Our flight home left Vancouver at 6pm on Thursday 24th Feb, took 9.5 hours and landed in the UK on Friday at about 11.30am (which was 3.30 am for us… I’m sure you know how jetlag works). Everything went smoothly and we were very grateful to be collected and driven back to Ollie’s parents when we landed. We didn’t get much sleep on the flight and are now currently struggling to stay awake until a reasonable bedtime in our new timezone (we aren’t apologising for any spelling or grammar errors).

Thank you everyone for reading and leaving us comments, it has really helped us stay connected to everyone back home. Once we get settled and have some more free time, we have vague plans to make a book of the posts (including the comments) as a reminder of our two years in Canada.

Now, after a week seeing family, we will be off to try and find somewhere to live in Glasgow. Rosie has been working remotely for a space company there and is excited to get back into an office. We will continue to camp, walk, cycle, climb, sail and drink beer/whiskey. Perhaps our Rollie Followers will be lucky and get an occasional update (mountain photos mandatory), even if we don’t manage every week.

That’s all folks!

It’s been a busy one, so we will keep it short.

Last weekend Rosie took a nature bath…

Ollie returned from his ski trip and spent the next few days selling things on facebook marketplace. He no longer has any faith in humanity.

We have a lot of things to sort out before we leave. This time next week we will be in the UK!

Can you tell who wrote the blog this week.

It’s the R, O, I and E in Rollie here, reporting solo once again! My week has been very quiet. I have probably done a bit too much work, but my new job is pretty exciting and there is lots to learn. On Tuesday and Wednesday evening I sent my first commands to a satellite during a couple of passes over the Glasgow ground station. I got the honours as it was 4am in the UK. I didn’t break anything!

I went camping with lots of Australians at the weekend. It was a bit rainy, but one of them had the biggest tarp I had ever seen, so it didn’t matter. Forgot to photograph the tarp, but here is the group photo after we had packed up, and a shot of two of us taking a cold dip in the morning.

The weather has been very nice for a couple of days this week and I have enjoyed walking down to the beach to look at the boats.

I asked Ollie to send me a summary of his ski trip to share with you. Below is what I received. I felt that most of the messages needed further elaboration/translation.

They started their trip at Thom and Hannah’s place in Sun Peaks, which is let out as an AirBnB. As they had stayed there for a couple of nights, there was some cleaning to do before they left (in preparation for actual paying guests arriving at 4pm). They cut it very close to the wire, finishing at 3.57pm, and had to sneak past the guests waiting outside in their car. Fortunately, the guests left a good review, so Thom and Ollie are very proud of themselves. Hmm.

The next day they went to a small mountain near Kamloops, which apparently burns families and has very violent lifts.

Not much to say about Silverstar. I assume some skiing was done, or maybe they flew some kites.

Revelstoke was another luxury stay at a different friend’s apartment, which is also let out as an AirBnB. Partners in Grime Cleaning Co. weren’t trusted here, so they did have to pay the cleaning fee. After a rest day, they did some sliding at Revelstoke ski resort. Ollie appears to be asking me if Revelstoke has the longest vertical descent in Canada, or if that is N/A. I don’t have the answer, sorry Ollie.

After Revelstoke, they apparently drove off-grid and didn’t have any signal for one evening and most of the next day. Hannah and I assumed they were either dead or ghosting us because they had run off together. Luckily they made it back to civilisation in time to complete that day’s Wordle.

On Friday, they went to a red mountain and skied through daffodils with lambs and bunnies. The lambs and bunnies are difficult to avoid and make it a bumpy ride, so the ski resort apologised for that. Also, the resort’s supply of Class A drugs was disrupted and Ollie was annoyed about this.

They have been using swimming pools to shower, so don’t smell as bad as could be expected. Ollie clearly didn’t have high hopes for Thom and Hannah’s lovingly converted white van Elvis, I hope they don’t read this Ollie…

Ollie also underestimated Thom’s ability to drive… but is pleased that he is the passenger for once. I hope Thom piled his belongings on you and demanded that you put music on, set up the maps and google the menu for a restaurant all at once, whilst you were trying not to be sick around bends.

Well Rollie followers, anything else you want to know?

Ollie has finished work now and gone off on a lads lads lads trip skiing with Thom, touring around multiple ski resorts in BC for an indeterminate amount of time (probably 10 days). They’re starting in the luxury of Thom and Hannah’s apartment in Sun Peaks, and also have a couple of days at another friend’s apartment in Revelstoke, but then they are sleeping all cuddled up in Thom and Hannah’s camper van. I am not worried about them misbehaving, Canada’s apres-ski doesn’t really compare to Europe’s and also they are both pretty old and boring now. I doubt they’ll stay up past 8pm after tiring themselves out sliding down hills all day. I am worried about what they are going to feed themselves and how they are going to smell. Ollie is still using a magic crystal rock instead of deodorant.

Sadly we didn’t get out and do anything photogenic last weekend. On Friday we took the SeaBus (run by the same company as the SkyTrain… you see what they did there) over to North Vancouver to visit a few breweries with some friends. It looks like a ferry from the outside, but inside it looks like a bus! Wild. The views as we travelled across Vancouver Harbour were really good, and we saw some huge container ships up pretty close, but we are too cool to take photos on the SeaBus like a pair of tourists.

Saturday we used for some life admin, which is annoying but necessary – we have a lot of stuff to sell (it’s amazing how much you can accumulate in 2 years) and things to organise for relocating back to the UK. The weather wasn’t great on Sunday, but we had a good day hanging out with friends, playing some games and watching some train videos on YouTube.

On Tuesday Ollie and Thom figured they weren’t going to be doing enough mountain sliding over the next couple of weeks, so they took themselves off to Whistler for the day. Ollie wanted me to share this video of him showing off:

How boring, I apologise for that.

Contrary to what I said last week, I am still struggling with the 5am starts. Mostly because Ollie refuses to go to bed early and keeps me awake until at least 22:30 most nights. Well, not this week! I am writing this at 19:30 and shall be brushing my teeth and going to bed shortly after for a peaceful night’s sleep in a tidy apartment. Enjoy Ollie’s dribble and morning farts Thom! Everything is coming up Rosie.

No excuses this week. We’re both healthy and one of us is getting used to the 5am starts, so we’ve managed to do a blog!

After our sleepy Friday night, we got up early to drive to the Callaghan Valley for some cross-country skiing at the Whistler Olympic park. This was only our third time attempting it (second time for our friend Maria) and the skis are really very skinny… but by the end of the day we could definitely see improvements. Rosie won with 7 falls, Maria in close second with 5, Ollie was clearly not trying hard enough and scored 0.

Biggest skiing achievement of this season so far goes to Rosie, who managed to slalom down a steep hill to avoid a capsized Maria and her discarded ski pole, safely coming to a stop next to Ollie at the bottom. The board is considering revoking this award after she later claimed “I don’t need to use that herringbone shape to get up this hill, I can do it with my skis straight” and then slid backwards and landed flat on her face.

After the skiing, we stopped halfway home for some winter camping in Squamish with some more friends. It was pretty chilly, but we had plenty of firewood and a poodle who was (fairly) willing to sit on your lap to keep you warm. Oh and beer jackets of course.

Thanks to the 5am starts, Rosie now has more free time in the afternoons and has been able to get out of the apartment whilst there is still some daylight. On Tuesday she was invited to join Hannah on a short walk to Bowen lookout from the Cypress ski resort (a spot we also visited last year). It had been cloudy and foggy in the city for the past few days, who knew we just needed to get a little higher to escape it! The views of the clouds over the sea were pretty special.

Ollie couldn’t make it on Tuesday, but on Thursday we went to another popular post-work short walk and viewpoint – Dog mountain (we’ve been here a few times, but it was first featured here). The clouds had mostly cleared by then, but there was still some mist in the city and sea fog to make the view even better.

We now only have four more weekends left in Canada, so the pressure is on to make the most of it! Unfortunately it is supposed to be raining this weekend and we are also going to visit some new (to us) breweries tonight… fingers crossed we can still manage to do something worthwhile on Saturday.

We have both now recovered from our bouts of COVID, but still haven’t prepared anything for the blog this week… Sorry!

Last Friday was Rosie’s final day working for the Canadian train company. She is now working remotely for a UK space company again, in preparation for our return in 5 weeks time (how has that come around so fast!?). Unfortunatley for everyone involved, she has to get up at 5am to have any reasonable overlap with her new colleagues. Rosie is grumpy because she hasn’t been getting enough sleep (Ollie won’t let her go to bed early enough). Ollie is grumpy because Rosie keeps waking him up through the wall by talking about satellites at 5am. Maybe we will get used to it next week.

Now that we are back at full health, we need to make the most of our last few weeks in Canada, starting with some more cross country skiing and winter camping this weekend. So hopefully next week’s blog will have pictures!

Good night zzzzz

• Ollie ill saturday – still ill
• Rosie looking after Ollie Saturday till Thursday.
• Rosie ill Thursday – still ill
• Blog writing skills impaired

Predictably we started 2022 with hangovers (one of us worse than the other…) but you’ll be glad to hear that we have fully recovered now. We had lots of fun on new years eve competing in “apartment olympics” – mostly featuring ping pong ball based competitions, but with one paper aeroplane javelin event. Congratulations to gold medalists Thom and Hannah.

Saturday was a write-off, but we did manage to redeem ourselves on Sunday by visiting the Museum of Vancouver and learning about the history of the city (it’s only 156 years old so it didn’t take too long) and the first nations who have lived here before and since. They also have a gallery with lots of old neon signs to dazzle you.

Monday was a delayed statutory holiday for new years day. Rosie managed to persuade Ollie, along with friends Tom and Maria, to do something indoors and crafty rather than outdoors and sliding-down-hills-in-the-snow-y. Perhaps inspired by the 1960s gallery at the museum, we spent the afternoon tie-dying t-shirts. Which is your favourite? ✌ ☮ 🌻

This week has gone pretty fast and we haven’t made plans for this weekend yet… so it will be a surprise for you when you tune in next week.

What are the chances that our blog was released on both Christmas Day and New Years Day. Aren’t you all lucky!

Despite Ollie’s mum warning us not to leave the blog to the last minute on New Years Eve, we have done just that… We have some friends coming over and cocktails to make, so here is a round up of our fun in the snow this week!

We did jump in the sea very briefly on Christmas morning, Hannah tried to take a video but Thom ruined it, so we have these before and after pictures instead. It was pretty cold!

We both had the rest of the week off and have been out in the snow most days, including:

• Snowshoeing on the trails at the Cypress ski resort
• Walking to Norvan falls to see how frozen it was after a particularly cold snap
• Some bird watching in Stanley Park (Stefan, we think we found one…)
• Sledding near the beach

2021 has been another strange one but we are extremely lucky to have spent it in beautiful British Columbia with new friends (and some old ones). We are looking forward to whatever 2022 brings, except more plagues… done with that now.

Happy new year everyone!

Merry Christmas everyone!! We were planning to come back to the UK for the festive period but, unfortunately, we decided to cancel our plans because of some virus. This does mean, however, that we stand a good chance of having a white Christmas in Vancouver. There is snow forecast overnight and an Arctic outflow warning…

“An Arctic ridge of high pressure over the BC interior will bring strong and bitterly cold outflow winds to coastal communities beginning Saturday night,” says Environment Canada. “The outflow winds will create wind chill values of minus 20 and below.”

Minus 20!! Luckily we will mainly stay inside, except for the morning where we might be going for a swim in the sea – let’s see how that goes.

Hopefully Ollie will get to ski for a second Christmas in a row too. Even Rosie got involved in the skiing last week, albeit on shallower slopes and thinner skis at one of the local mountains, Cypress.

Even if there is no snow where you are, we hope you all have a lovely day and nobody breaks any limbs sliding down slippery slopes.