Happy new year everybody! This week we have had fun looking back though all of our 48 blog posts from 2020 and trying to come up with some highlights. It was pretty hard to come up with a short list, so here is our long list instead!

We landed in Canada on February the 10th and stayed with our friends Thom and Hannah. We enjoyed a trip to a hockey game (before everything was cancelled), played frisbee golf and went on some scenic walks around the city.

On our second week, we set off on what was supposed to be a 6 month trip across Canada, starting on Vancouver Island. We had Workaway placements in Victoria and Nanaimo, where we learnt about chickens, sheep, woodworking, beekeeping and to say “itadakimasu” before our dinner!

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Once it became clear our planned trip was not going to turn out as we planned, we hunkered down on Gabriola Island for 4 months! We stayed on two different farms, made some friends for life, one of us grew a horrendous beard and we both learnt all about market gardening and being a bit more Buddhist.

Now we get to August. After buying our car Elsie and building a bed frame for the back, we set off to explore more of British Columbia. We started with Strathcona Provincial Park, checked back in with Vancouver, went on lots of spectacular hiking in Squamish, did another couple of Workaways in Pemberton and Kamloops, looked after the world’s friendliest kitty in Kelowna and did more hiking and camping in Fernie and Kootenay National Park.

As the summer ended, we decided to treat ourselves to a very fancy AirBnB in Sun Peaks Resort, where Thom and Hannah have been living. Whilst there, Ollie biked and Rosie baked. We both tried to get online work, but Rosie ended up getting an office job in Vancouver. We loved it when the snow arrived, especially Ollie who got on the skis as soon as he could.

Which just about brings us up to now. Rosie’s job is going well, our apartment has a bit more furniture in it now and Ollie is getting used to the local ski hills.

Our new year’s resolution is to make the most of our second year in Canada, so we can give you something exciting to read every week. Thanks for sticking with us and for all your lovely comments over the year. We miss you!

We totally forgot about the blog, dropping the ball for the first time in 10 months… We blame the Christmas food coma.

We miss all of our friends and family back home and hope you are having a fun filled festive period.

Next week will have a doublely long post to make up it!

Last weekend wasn’t a total success: we did get outside as we hoped, but we did not buy any furniture. Saturday was a nice sunny day, so we went for a walk around Burnaby mountain, which is a very small mountain (about 390m elevation) inside the city. It’s mostly forested, but we got some some good views through the trees. There is a university at the top, which was mostly deserted, but it looked like a beautiful place to study.

On Sunday, we went around several second hand shops and thrift stores looking for furniture and other household stuff. We were hoping not to buy new, partly to save the planet and partly because kitting out a whole flat in one go is expensive! Unfortunately, everything we found was either horrible or an antique (so more expensive than buying something new). Eventually we ended up exactly where Rosie was trying to avoid… IKEA… Ollie knows what he likes though, he likes his SKARSTA sit-stand desk or even a MICKE at a push. But even IKEA let us down! They were sold out of all of the desks as everyone has been working from home. All we managed were a few plates and a toilet brush. At least we got a $1 veggie hot dog at the end.

After trawling Facebook Marketplace in the evenings this week, we have managed to get one desk and one dining table. We picked up the apartment keys on Thursday evening and are having someone install the internet today. Our AirBnB booking ends on Sunday, so as things currently stand, we will be sleeping on our camping mats and sharing our single camping chair on Sunday evening! Let’s hope shopping goes a little better this weekend…

It wouldn’t be a Roaming Rollie post without Ollie showing off all the skiing he has been doing, so here are a couple of pictures from his first night-time ski session. Happy weekend everyone!

It looks like our travels are definitely over for a while. Last weekend was spent looking for an apartment and are happy to say that we have found one that met our criteria: space for two desks, natural light and a mountain view. The rent is slightly more than we wanted to pay, but it is much bigger than all the others and has a lovely wide living area with lots of windows and a big balcony. As we will be working from home and spending most of our time there, we think it’ll be worth the extra expense. Unfortunately the furniture won’t be staying, so the interior design standards will be replaced by IKEA and thrift store chic. We are sure our decision wasn’t swayed by a summer of sleeping in caravans, cabins, a tent and our car. We get the keys next Friday.

Apartment hunting took up our whole weekend last week, so not much else to report. Rosie has been working full time in our AirBnB, dreaming of the views from the new apartment. Ollie has been doing a little bit of work, a little bit of skiing and a little bit of baking (he has taken over as chief bread-maker now Rosie is the chief bread-winner). We try to go out every day for a walk. It is best to go after dark, as the locals seem to be having some kind of Christmas decoration competition. Our favourite is probably the dinosaurs, with the helicopter piloted by penguins a close second (we forgot to take a picture of that one.)

We are hoping to get out of the city and go for a hike tomorrow, there are lots of parks, lakes and mountains that we haven’t visited yet. We should also do some shopping for our new apartment though, otherwise we’ll have to cook with our camping stove out on the balcony.

We’ve been quite busy this week, with work and Ollie moving from Sun Peaks to Burnaby. Luckily, Hannah did some video editing for us, featuring Ollie’s highlights from his first ever black run (that means it was a scary one). He even managed an accidental 180 at the end of it. Enjoy the slo-mo commentary…

Meanwhile:

There are two other things of note this week. Firstly, when Ollie drove across the dreaded highway thru hell on Tuesday it resulted in a chip in Elsie’s windscreen. All of the cars were throwing grit up from the road and it seems to be unavoidable. We’ve had it filled with some magic goo. Secondly, we’ve booked a few flat viewings this weekend so we don’t have to live in an expensive AirBnB anymore. Top on the priority list are: space for two desks, natural light and a mountain view.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Rosie headed to Burnaby on Sunday to start her new job the following day. The bus company had a policy where you could buy the seat next to you for a reduced price to avoid sitting next to a stranger – not sure that’s the most fair policy to stop the spread of COVID. Luckily there were only 5 people on the bus, which made the ride over the highway thru hell less eventful and no Rosies were hurt.

Ollie made the best use of the airbnb to ski all weekend, with a little prep work on the skis thrown in for good measure.

Rosie’s first week in the big city has gone well. The office is still open, as trains are essential, and everyone she has met so far has been great. The first few days were just reading about trains, but she has managed some (quite slow) real work on Thursday and Friday. There’s lots of interesting things to learn and it looks like she will be working on a metro expansion project just down the road in Vancouver! Living alone for a week was like a flash back to happier times in Hitchin before Ollie moved in – very tidy and quiet with early bedtimes and nobody complaining about the expensive vegetarian products and olives draining the grocery budget. Burnaby seems like a really good area to live in, although she hasn’t managed to see it in the daylight yet.

With Rosie MIA, Ollie had to rely on Hannah for two meals this week, as well as the dregs from the freezer. He has one more ski weekend before heading to join Rosie on Monday. He’ll be working on his speed as well as his technique on the Three Bears route – which had him straddling a small tree last week, resulting in a 180 degree twist to a perfect face plant!

This week was Rosie’s last week of freedom before moving to Vancouver and starting full-time work again. She has been very busy packing, cleaning and sitting around, but she managed to find time to complete this tricky jigsaw.

Ollie has already settled into his 4 hour working days, and is enjoying finding time to learn some new skills!

The ski hills open tomorrow and Ollie is very excited to get out there and do some sliding. Having not put on a pair of skis for several years, he wanted to have a little practise. Here he is doing some (slightly illegal) ski practise on a rough road near our AirBnB.

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Rosie has been able to enjoy the snow for the last few times. Thom and Hannah kindly lent us their snow shoes and we had an (again slightly illegal) explore of the resort’s snow show trails.

We also found some professionally made sleds in our AirBnB. They were a bit better than last week’s homemade attempt (which has since fallen apart… oops).

Rosie is getting the bus to Vancouver on Sunday, while Ollie will finally get a couple of weekends on the slopes. After being stuck together 24/7 for almost 10 months, it’ll be a strange week. Tune in next time to find out if our relationship survives the long-distance.

Well we’re still here! The vote resulted in a landslide victory for the “I need something to read in lockdown” party (7 votes to 0, one of the votes on each button was me testing that it worked). This week we have more woodwork and snow fun, plus an update on our longer term plans.

First things first! Ollie has made this video documenting our latest foray into carpentry:

The sledding in that video took place on Thursday afternoon, where we’d had about 10 cm of snow over the preceding days. Then overnight on Thursday and during the day on Friday, we got a lot more… The Canadians doing the snow ploughing are estimating 16 inches (whatever that means). If it keeps going, it is likely Ollie will finally be able to strap his planks to his feet and slide down the mountain next weekend. The resort is aiming to start the lifts running on Saturday the 21st, snow dependant.

In other news, Rosie has totally failed at finding short term-online work as per the original plan. Instead, she is ticking off another big engineering company and has been offered a job at Thales as a systems engineer working on urban rail signalling projects. You may be familiar with their work from hits such as the DLR, Jubilee, Northern, Metropolitan, District, Circle, Hammersmith & City and Piccadilly lines, but their technology was first used on the SkyTrain in Vancouver. Rosie has a contract for 6 months, but may be asked to say longer depending on how many train crashes she causes. Sadly we therefore have to leave the snowy tinsel-town where it is always Christmas and move to the rainy city where it is always COVID. Just kidding – I’m sure we’ll be fine.

Rosie’s office is in a city just outside of Vancouver called Burnaby. She is starting on the 23rd November, which didn’t give us much time to find an apartment to live in. We’ve booked another AirBnB for a month and will hopefully find a more permanent place to live while we are there.

Rosie will be getting the bus down by herself. Ollie will stay until our current AirBnB runs out and spend some quality time with his true love – his skis.

This week we have mostly been baking… “What’s new?” I hear you cry. Well, this week Ollie has felt the knead to get involved! I suppose he is getting bored with doing muffin but applying for jobs and working on his computer. It was a bit of a whisk, but things seemed to turn out dough-k.

We have made panettone and Christmas cake. Some of the panettone has now been eaten, but none of the Christmas cake. It gets to sit around drinking rum for a month, the lucky thing.

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At the weekend, we drove to Abbotsford to collect our winter tyres. We’d left them there back in week 30 because we didn’t know where we’d be when the snow arrived. It was a long drive down, a short wait to have our summer tyres swapped out, then another long drive back. About 700km in total! We are also not sure where we are going to be when winter is over, but wherever we are we will have to drive to Abbotsford again… sorry planet.

Of course we watched some of the US election results on Tuesday. We went to bed a little depressed and confused about the world we live in, but things have been getting steadily better from there. In other news, Ollie would like to encourage you all to fight the corrupt system and help stop the count!

We are still applying for jobs and looking for online work. Ollie has been having some luck with short data science contracts, but there is less market for a freelance mission systems engineer. Days still seem to be going pretty quickly, but they are less filled with thrilling adventures and photo opportunities. For this reason, we were thinking of only updating Rollie followers every other week. This isn’t a dictatorship though, so you can have your say below.

Do you want to keep hearing from us every week?

Thumbs up = “Of course, I need something to read in lockdown”

Thumbs down = “I was too polite to say, but once a fortnight would be plenty”

No illegal voting please, we don’t want you finding any ballots at 4am and adding them to the list.

Now the snow has covered all of the mountain biking runs, Thom is dreaming of pulling the perfect manual in the spring (that’s a wheelie to you and me). The internet granted his wish and he found some plans to build a manual trainer. With a mitre saw, bits of wood, screws, a screwdriver and two willing helpers, Monday night was spent constructing our wooden frame and then starting our manual training.

Despite not being able to cycle, we are still having fun in the snow. On Tuesday, Hannah took us on a snowy walk/slip up Embleton Mountain, just down the road from Sun Peaks. We’ve never walked in so much snow and the novelty still hasn’t worn off.

The weather has crept above 1°C over the last few days, so the snow has started to melt. This is lucky for us, as we have plans to drive down the mountain (and then a further 300 km…) to pick up our winter tyres tomorrow. We left them at a garage near Vancouver because we didn’t know where we would be by the time winter arrived. It’s a long day of driving, but we are looking forward to braking and turning corners again.

Looks like the snow will be back with a vengeance before next week is over:

Other highlights this week include Rosie’s first attempt at homemade bagels – Ollie said they were fine. We also found some proper free range eggs from a local chicken lady. We’ve got big plans to bake them into a panettone next week – anything to keep the Christmas cheer going!