Not much to report this week. Another rainy weekend last week, but we had some life admin to do – Applying to switch to a visitor visor for a few weeks after our work permits expire in February (not long now!) and filing our UK taxes (which we almost forgot about… oops).

We had our last skating lesson on Monday. Rosie has signed up to continue the course in January as we didn’t get through the whole syllabus – side stops are a goal. Ollie will be far too busy skiing so is quitting skating. Speaking of skiing, Ollie did some night skiing on Tuesday and then went to the climbing gym on Wednesday. He is pretty tired now.

We had an excellent dinner at Thom and Hannah’s on Monday – Thom’s greek fake meatballs will be talked about for generations! Then this evening we have been making tiramisu and a tofu quiche for a pot-luck housewarming party we are going to tomorrow.

It has been snowing in Vancouver a few times this week, nothing has settled though. We are hoping the worse of the r**n might be over now. Our evening views have been more like the below and less like the inside of a cloud.

Hopefully we can do something outside this weekend as Rosie hasn’t seen the proper snow yet. There is a weather warning for a snowstorm in the mountains on Saturday, so we will have to play it by ear. We are looking forward to a special Skype birthday party for Rosie’s Nana on Sunday, she is going to be 80 years young!

See you next week and keep avoiding those omicrons.

Last weekend there was a break in the rain so we booked a spontaneous trip to one of the gulf islands that we hadn’t visited before – Galiano. The inhabited areas are smaller than Gabirola and Salt Spring, and there are no cideries/breweries or wineries (boooo). It has just as many great beaches to explore though.

It is just a short ferry ride from Vancouver, as Galiano is the first stop on the Southern Gulf Islands route – just 1 hour rather than the 3 hours it takes to get to Salt Spring.

We dragged our friends Tom and Maria along and booked a cabin with a wood stove. After staying up too late on Friday night, we had a relaxed Saturday wandering along beaches and looking at some local art galleries/shops. We went to bed slightly earlier on Saturday night, but had an equally relaxed day on Sunday with more beaches and galleries. Unfortunately our ferry back wasn’t until 8pm, so we had to sit in the only pub on the island for a few hours once it got dark. Well, this was only unfortunate for Ollie as he was the designated driver.

As usual, we saw lots of wildlife. Here is a selection of floating birds for identification, if you are that way inclined:

Ollie has given up skating in favour of skiing. Here are some photos from his first trip up Cypress mountain on Thursday this week (don’t get too jealous, it’s raining again now).

In other news, the barge is still there. There has been some activity with a floating crane, which is related to repairs that need to be made before it can be floated. In between our updates, you can check out what’s happening with this live stream.

This week we have a video to show you some of the things we’ve been doing in our ice skating lessons. Unfortunatley we fear they feel more impressive than they look…

Last weekend was as rainy as expected, but we did manage to persuade another couple of people to help with our escape room. It was “hurricane” themed and the concept involved us trying to get the pretend generator going again… so we almost didn’t realise when the actual power was cut to the building just after we had finished! Luckily we had torches. It was very exciting.

The weather seems to have improved over the last couple of days, so we are going on a spontaneous weekend away to another gulf island. In fact, we need to go and pack! Tune in to hear all about it next week.

First thing’s first – barge update: it’s still there. The high tide on Sunday was nowhere near high enough to float it off the rocks, so we got out of bed early for nothing! The only remaining hope for the barge owners is the “king tide” which will happen on the 6th December. The rain did let up last weekend, but is now back and causing more concern for the areas which are still underwater as it is.

We have lots of wonderful photographs to share with you this week. Here is us on the East Vancouver “Culture Crawl” on Saturday:

We went with some friends who told us about the event. Lots of artists and craftspeople open up their studios for you to walk around and take a look. We saw many (expensive) paintings, sculptures, ceramics, furniture and glassware. We didn’t buy anything.

Here is us at a small fondue party we were invited to later that evening:

We consumed just the right amount of cheese and alcoholic beverages, but did stay up a bit too late, so were very tired on Sunday. It was a fun do!

Here is a photo of our lazy Sunday walk around the Vancouver sea wall:

We also ate almond croissants that had 800 calories in each… Ollie went mountain biking and Rosie did some knitting to burn it off.

Every time we have stepped out this week we have been drenched, so we don’t want to spend too much time outside this weekend. We are going to a brewery this evening and then may do another escape room on Saturday. We can’t persuade any friends to go with us though, so it will be a Rollie solo effort… we are concerned that there might be a little more fighting than usual.

For the last month or so we have done a lot of complaining about the rain… but this week it has hit whole new levels of bad. In downtown Vancouver, we actually didn’t notice much difference compared to the usual downpours. However, places further north and east of us saw rainfall that exceeded the monthly average in just two days.

This deluge has caused massive flooding and widespread destruction across southern BC. The situation is partly thanks to the wildfires this summer, which were also far worse than normal. The fires left behind a water repellant crust on the soil which stops it from absorbing water and increases the likelihood of landslides.

Thousands of people had been evacuated from several towns, some just in time as the swelling river washed away their homes and everything they own. In Abbotsford, about 40 mins drive from Vancouver, farmers have had to abandon their land and livestock, now underwater. The death toll for farm animals is estimated to be in the thousands, but only one human death has been reported so far (this will likely rise as clean-up operations commence).

All of the major highways connecting the greater Vancouver area to the rest of the province have been closed due to flooding, mudslides or sections being completed washed away. Earlier in the week, 275 people had to be rescued by helicopter after being trapped in their cars overnight between two mudslides on one of the highways. There is concern about food shortages in some areas which have been totally cut off from their usual supply networks.

So far, the only negative effect to us personally is that a trip to Sun Peaks (the ski resort we stayed in last year) which we had planned for 2 weeks time might have to be cancelled. The picture above is the road we should have been driving on… There are other routes that may be opened by then (they are all currently closed), but they are likely to be reserved for essential travel only.

There has been one positive effect to us personally (and pretty selfishly)… The storm on Monday brought extremely high winds to the coast. It was fun to watch, if you could shield your eyes from the highspeed airborne leaves and other debris. It blew a huge barge from its anchorage and pushed it perilously close to a major bridge near our apartment. It was pretty dangerous as it was obviously completely uncontrollable, but made for a great spectacle from the shore. Luckily it ended up running aground on the beach, where it has been stuck all week like some apocalyptic art installation. It’s the most exciting thing to happen in Vancouver since we’ve been here!

On Tuesday, we went down to the beach at high tide to watch the owners attempt to move the barge with one tiny tug boat. Unfortunately, the water levels were nowhere near as high as they were when the barge arrived, so it is totally grounded and did not budge. The tide will be higher on Sunday morning, so we will make sure to get up early to watch their second attempt then!

Bargegate is definitely the highlight of our week. The Canadian football (apparently it is different to American football) that we saw on Friday was pretty boring and the only other thing we’ve been doing is practising our ice skating. Ollie can sort-of go backwards now, very slowly… There seems to be some respite from the rain this weekend, so perhaps we will be able to go outside and do something interesting.

We have approximately 4 minutes to write this blog as we are going out and we forgot about our faithful Rollie followers…

This week:

We have started another ice skating course, 1 level up from our previous one. The quality of participants and speed of lessons is much faster now, so hopefully we can both keep up!

We had Thursday off for Remembrance Day. We spent the day making Spanish food to have with our friends and fit in a short (and very busy!) skating session. Too many croquetas were eaten! Plus we already felt a bit sick from drinking too many beers at the pub the night before.

Now we are about to go and see an American “Football” game at BC Place stadium. It’s the BC Lions vs the Calgary Stampeders. We managed to get cheap tickets, so we have low expectations for the quality of our view, but it will be great to see inside the stadium. BC Lions have also lost their last 6 games.

There is only one picture of our week, the snow has arrived on the mountains!

Bye bye!

We got a miraculously sunny weekend and wanted to make the most of it, so took Friday off work and caught a ferry to Salt Spring Island.

Salt Spring Island is the largest and the most popular of the southern gulf islands, close to Victoria on Vancouver Island. It has a similar feel to Gabriola Island, where we spent 4 months at the start of our Canadian adventure, but with more people, shops/restaurants/things to do.

We opted to get a ferry from Vancouver which takes you to Salt Spring via some stops on 3 other gulf islands. The other option is to go to Victoria first and change, but this seemed like too much effort. Once we arrived, we headed to the campsite in Ruckle Park on the south-east side of the island. The temperatures were in single digits, so only the brave campers were there. Aside from the quiet campsite, another benefit of late-season camping is that sunrise isn’t until 8am. On Saturday and Sunday morning, we sat for 1/2 hour before sunrise watching otters, seals, sea lions and lots of birds and drinking our coffee. Sunset was just as beautiful and we combated the cold by burning lots of dead trees (sorry COP26).

Here is some of the wildlife Rosie managed to snap at the campsite. Our favourites were the sea lions, they were so big! Didn’t manage a photo of those though unfortunately.

On Saturday we crammed in all of the touristy things to do on Salt Spring. We started with the farmers market, went on to a winery and a cidery and finally said hello to some goats at a cheese making place (a cheesery?). We had already visited a brewery and another cidery on Friday night, but still hadn’t ticked off all of the alcohol made on the island!

On Sunday we decided to be more healthy and went on a short walk up Mount Erskine. We knocked on several fairy’s doors on the way, but nobody seemed to be in. After our walk, we headed back to the campsite. We hadn’t managed to book a ferry on Sunday, so stayed another night. There was absolutely nobody else there which made for an extremely peaceful evening.

The price we paid for our beautiful and tranquil last night on the island was the 4.45am wake up to pack up the tent and catch the ferry back to Vancouver. We did get one more sunrise from the ferry though.

Vancouver has granted us our perfect weekend, so we are back to the r**n this weekend. No plans yet, apart from having Thom and Hannah over for dinner tonight, so we best get cooking!

One way to complain less is to write less.

Here are some pictures of our walk to the waterfall, it was wonderful:

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Sadly when we got back to the car, we had a parking ticket! The ticket was quite wet so perhaps the rain washed away the instructions for how to pay it…

Look at the spooky thing that is happening this weekend:

Got to make the most of this opportunity, so we’ve taken Friday off work and are setting sail for Salt Spring Island to do some camping, walking and alcohol tasting (we might have to choose between the brewery, cidery and various vineyards as we doubt we can handle them all). Plus, if we start to miss being wet, we can jump in the sea!

See you next week and happy Halloween.

With the rain continuing to fall, people keep telling us we should be used to it as we are from England. So we looked into the data: Vancouver sees between 2 and 3 times more rain than London in a year! We didn’t sign up for that!

To avoid the weather, we have started beginner ice skating lessons. Neither of us feel that comfortable on the ice yet, especially with Canadians whizzing past us, but hopefully with 3 x 45 minute sessions we will be a modern version of Torvill and Dean…or not…

Rosie was the first one to fall over in lesson #1.

Last Saturday, we also did an escape room. This suits our skills much better and, after a questionable start, we managed to escape with plenty of time to spare. It was themed around arcade games and it had us playing multiple team games to unlock clues. We will likely do all of the escape rooms in Vancouver if the October weather is anything to go by.

It’s been a while since we’ve been for a walk and the waterfalls must be looking pretty impressive with all this precipitation, so perhaps we will brave a trip outside this weekend.

Last weekend was a long one, thanks to Canadian Thanksgiving on Monday. We were especially grateful for all of the harvests, as we managed to squeeze in 3 dinner parties. Unfortunately we forgot to squeeze in any photos…

The first one was at the apartment of Ollie’s ex-boss from UBC and involved Pandemic – a very apt board game that involves trying to save the world from outbreaks of 4 different diseases. You’ll all be relieved to hear we successfully cured 3 of them and eradicated 1, winning the game. Perhaps the WHO should get in touch with us.

Up next on Saturday we had two Australians, who we had previously gone hiking with to Brandywine Meadows, over at Chez Rollie for the evening. We had a Roast Beast (Rosie was too lazy to hunt and kill the beans herself) and got to play some games again.

On Monday the fun continued as we went round Tom and Maria’s for a Thanksgiving with some of their friends. Everyone brought something along, we took two freshly baked sourdough loaves. The vegetarian meat alternative game was raised with a Stuffed Beast this time – our friend works for The Very Good Butchers, which is why we have so many of their products!

After all the food and drink, we have been in coma for most of the rest of the week. Ollie has recently picked up climbing and so we spent Tuesday night watching ‘Free Solo‘, a film about a climber who climbs a 900m rockwall in Yosemite National Park with no ropes. Unfortunately this did not convince Rosie to take up climbing, so Ollie will also have to climb with no rope or partner.

We hope you all have a good weekend, with an atmospheric river coming to Vancouver we will likely be inside with wine!