The 2007 Round Up

Welcome to our photo review of 2007. As you can imagine it has been a busy year for us and we wanted to share a few of our favourite places with you captured in our photos. We hope you enjoy our resume.

January

A photo from Stanage End in The Peak District showing an old unused mill wheel from a bygone era where we spent many hours hiking and climbing.

February
The first snow of 2007 in Derbyshire allowed Fergus the Freelander to test the much beloved 4 wheel drive. Fergus is shown here in the snow at The Robin Hood Inn's car park in Derbyshire, providing good practice for the Canadian winters.

Followed by a picture of Offley Place, our home for 18 months in Derbyshire.

March

Having unseasonably warm weather for the time of year allowed us to spend more time at Stanage and Curbar Edges - our favourite climbing haunts.

April

Much to his dismay, the photo editor said au revoir to his sports car - boo hoo!

May

The international shipping company came to pack our belongings for export to Canada - luckily no chickens were packed by mistake (see the little guy bottom left!)

June

We had our leaving parties with friends and family.


July

After finally arriving in Canada on 24th June and making our way from Vancouver to Nelson on 29th June, we waited 10 days before our shipping container arrived in Nelson after a three week trip from England to Montreal, travelled across Canada on a train to Vancouver to clear customs then it was transported back across to Nelson by truck. The truck driver had to reverse almost the whole length of View St to reach our house.

We also adopted our kittens from the BC SPCA - Harley & Phantom, needless to say they no longer look this tiny and rarely look this angelic.

We hiked up to the foot of Kokanee glacier, the photo shows the news editor striking out across alpine meadows.

August

We settled in to our new home and tried to get used to the heat of Canadian summers with temperatures up to 40 degrees Celsius.

September

Even the Lakeside Park was being watered as it was so hot and dry.

The view of Kootenay Lake from the beach at Kaslo looked as beautiful as ever, we have spent many hours here enjoying the peace and quiet.

Towards the end of the month the trees started to turn colour with autumn fast approaching.

October

Lakeside Park just starting to show some Autumn colours.

November

The photo editor continued to commute to work on his bike, taking the scenic route on this occasion but adding an extra 3 minutes to his journey time - taking him a whole 6 minutes to get to work.

The weather was still mainly sunny but it was getting noticeably colder.

December

The snow arrived.

We even enjoyed running on the beach in the snow on Christmas Day!

Here is a final picture of your Nelson Weekly News Editor and Photographer showing Castle Mountain in Banff National Park taken just last week on our road trip to Alberta to see our friends Mr and Mrs Tooth.

We wish you a very happy new year and best wishes for 2008.

We hope you continue to enjoy our blogs and we look forward to catching up with all your news from over the festive period very soon.

Love Rachael, Shaun, Phantom & Harley Davidson

xx

Merry Christmas From Nelson BC

Merry Christmas and our best wishes for a Happy and Prosperous New Year for 2008.

This year we have decided to do an e-card and we have made a donation to the local food bank at the Salvation Army in lieu of cards. Here is our greetings card for you, this Santa is one of the ornaments that hangs on our Christmas tree, Rachael found it at her favourite shop in Hebden Bridge - The Willow Garden.

We have been up to the ski hill again this weekend to find there is absolutely tons of snow. There has been 12 inches over the last three days and at the top of the lifts there is a base of around 69 inches of the lovely white stuff! Shaun has been using up 5 days vacation time this week and has been to the ski hill Monday, Tuesday (with Rachael as it was her day off), Thursday and Friday! The average snowfall in the season is around 10 to 15 metres, so the locals have been advising us that the snow conditions will just get better and better. The season is set to finish at the end of March so we are looking forwards to plenty of boarding/skiing - or at the moment it seems to be more like snow-surfing!

Well, it is Saturday night and we have managed to find an English film to watch - what better to watch in the run up to Christmas than James Bond in 'Goldfinger' - the one featuring Honour Blackman as Pussy Galore, how fabulous!

At last the photo editor has produced some photographs of Shaun's pottery to show you. The pottery class started off by teaching how to throw small cylinders, which can be turned into mugs by attaching handles and trimming the foot on the potter's wheel. Here is the final collection of mugs produced, in order, left-to-right with the final mug in the centre.

The next two pictures show the evolution of handles for the mugs - as you can see things improve a little with time and practise.

A close-up of the final mug and handle, vertically glazed in white, dark green and matte green.

Here is a honey-pot in a high-gloss dark green and matte green glaze.

A small bowl with a tall lid.

Another similar bowl with a more modest turned lid.

A pair of planters finished in pale yellow glaze with a white lip and blue interior.

Finally, here is a pitcher in blue with a matte green lip and pouring spout.

Well that is all for this week. A short news week in the run up to Christmas. We shall post more next week.

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and as always we look forward to hearing your news and indeed seeing any festive photos you may like to send us.

Love Rachael, Shaun, Harley & Phantom

xx

The Christmas Train

This week has been very festive, we have been out to a couple of Christmas parties. The first was at Shaun's work on friday afternoon in to the evening, the office closed at 3pm and partners and families were invited. The boss arranged outside caterers and the best thing was we only had to wander up the hill to get home.

Our second party was at our neighbours who hosted a Christmas 'drinks' do where we managed to catch up with our neighbours. Everyone seems to be hiberating now it's winter - the only time we get to see folks is when we are all out shovelling the snow from our driveways!

Thursday evening was fun when we went to the Lakeside park to see the Christmas train. The Christmas train has been running for the last nine years to raise food donations and money for local food banks. This year the train started off in Montreal on the 1st December and travels across Canada ending up in Vancouver in the 18th December.

The train stopped in Nelson on Thursday evening, so we took along our bag of tinned and dried foodstuffs for the food bank donation and we were treated to the Canadian Pacific train fully decorated in christmas lights and playing carols arriving at the park. Both sides of one of the carriages opened up and we enjoyed an hour-long show including carols, a Canadian rock-blues band called Wide Mouth Mason and Father Christmas.

As usual it seemed like the whole town turned out even though it was about -10 degrees and snowing! Here is another pictures of the train taken from BOB - the Big Orange Bridge.

We have spent most of the weekend at the ski hill enjoying our season passes. Shaun has been testing different skis as one of our local outdoor stores called R.O.A.M. has been at the hill offering demo skis to try out. The current favourites are the Reverend by G3 or Gotama from Volkl. The ski hill seemed pretty busy today as the parking lot was full even when we arrived there at 9.30am. We assumed that there were a lot of people heading off into the back country as the queues for the lifts were only about half a dozen folks. There was one funny thing that happened today at the hill - the water supply failed. We assumed that the pump to the well or creek had failed or frozen. Anyway the washrooms were out of order, however they posted a member of staff outside the washrooms to say that you were allowed to use the facilities "but you can't flush and you can only do number ones". Only in Nelson! Still it was better than making yellow snow! Here is a picture we took last week in the sunshine from the Silver King ski lift going up to the top of the piste.

Harley and Phantom are enjoying the snow and we are getting used to having to shovel the snow from the drive soon after it snows. We made a dreadfull mistake of leaving a huge build-up of snow one Monday morning, only to find it rained a little during the day and all the soft, light, dry, powder had turned into a very heavy white slab making the job of clearing it a real headache. So like the neighbours, we try to keep on top of it, besides it makes for a good workout and a trip to the gym.

Well that's all for this week, bye for now and we look forward to hearing all your plans for the Christmas period. Rachael, Shaun, Harley & Phantom.

Whitewater, Snow & Cycling

We start this weeks blog with a picture from the Silver King ski lift at Whitewater ski hill which is just 20 minutes from our house. As you can see the parking lot is really close to the lift. If you look closely you will be able to spot Clive our truck.

And this is a picture looking across at the mountain tops. The temperature was about -13C degrees but it was lovely and sunny.

We felt there was plenty of snow on the runs at about 120cm however, the locals seemed to think that the snow was thin as they tend to get about 15m on average each year!

We have another 'it could only happen in Nelson' tale for you this week. As you can appreciate Shaun has put his bike away for the winter as cycling to work wasn't an option when the snow and especially the ice arrived. But when we were walking to work the other day just leaving our house when a teenage boy cycled past us through the snow on his way to school on a unicycle!

Shaun's pottery will be collected from college this week so we shall post some pictures next week for you. Rachael's jewellery is in this picture - a sterling silver ring and a pendant which is sterling silver with four rivets and a back plate which is patenated to create the dark colour.

We found the courses great fun and we are thinking about taking further courses possibly in the next semester. Not only was it a good way to learn new skills but we met different folks not only from Nelson but also the surrounding areas as many folk travel quite a distance to attend the Kootenay School of Arts here in town. It was also great being a student again!

We went out for Rachael's work Christmas party on friday to a local restaurant which served the most delicious steaks. It was nice to have a meal and a few drinks with the folks from work and also their partners. Shaun's party is on friday this coming week and his boss has arranged outside caterers to come and do food for staff and families which will be nice to meet up with everyone again.

That is about all for this week, next week we shall be snowboarding again and Shaun will be venturing back on to skis again after finding his sea legs again on the snowboard. Rachael will try and catch some pictures of him in action for you to see next week.

We are also visiting the neighbours for a Christmas 'pot luck' next Saturday night so we shall let you know any local news we find out.

To end this weeks blog here is another photo for you to enjoy. Check out the guy in the blue all-in-one outfit, it is not either of us!

Hope you enjoy this weeks blog and we look forward to hearing from you.

Love Rachael, Shaun, Harley & Phantom xx

PS A quick note to Rachael's Grannie - thank you very much for the Yorkshire Tea bags!

SNOW IS HERE!

Well it has finally arrived - the snow first settled on Tuesday last week when we had about 7" in town in one day with a further 2" on Wednesday. Today we have had continuous snow storms from 8am and we are currently looking at about 10".

You will be pleased to hear that the truck did very well in the snow and we are very pleased we invested in some winter tyres. The only problem around taking out the car is having to dig the drive clear as we still haven't managed to work out which switches in the garage control the heated driveway! It is certainly a great workout for the shoulders. It is amazing how the road crews work through the night to keep the roads and footpaths clear too.

The kittens have enjoyed their first snow - Harley seems to enjoy running around the garden in the deep snow and Phantom likes to stick his head under the snow!

We have decorated the house in pretty fairy lights - we have chosen LED ice white lights which look really cool. Our next door neighbours have gone for coloured lights but we can't beat their 3 grazing reindeers sat in the garden covered in lights - when we are sure they are out we shall sneak round and take a picture for you!

This is a picture from the supermarket car park. The snow clearing guys had been out to clear the parking lot and there were 12 ft piles of snow at the side of the lot - very tempting to jump in!

And this is a pretty picture of the beach down at Lakeside Park.

The weather is not too cold really we are about -3C during the day down to around -11C degrees at night. Although it has been snowing today we have also had some sunshine.

The ski hill opens on Saturday so we are all set to go with our boards waxed.

The party seaon is almost here and it is Rachael's work 'do' on Friday for staff and partners which will be nice - a meal out with beer, wine and presents in the office first. We have also been invited to our neighbours party for some Christmas drinks.

Here is the house with fairy lights.

Our night classes have now finished and Rachael has made a sterling silver ring and pendant. Shaun is just awaiting his pots being returned from glaze firing possibly due back at the weekend so as soon as we have everything here we shall take some pictures to show you.

That is all for this week, we hope you are all well and still enjoy reading the blog. I am hoping that next week we shall be able to bring you a new banner heading which will be in keeping with the weather we are enjoying at the moment.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Love Rachael, Shaun, Harley & Phantomxx

Banff Mountain Film Festival

We have spent three evenings this week attending the Banff Mountain Film Festival which has been showing here in Nelson. The following information is taken from the festival magazine for you: 'just days after the Banff Film Festival finishes in the Canadian Rockies, the World Tour begins with approximately 480 screenings around the world. Between November 2007 and October 2008 over 200,000 mountain film enthusiasts in 32 countries will share the heart stopping action and mountains of inspiration' Apparently this year there were 296 films submitted to the competition, of which 55 were selected to be shown and of those 30 of the best go on the World Tour. Over the three evenings we saw some stunning films ranging from just 7 minutes through to hour long documentaries from around the world. The adventures included skiing, snow-kiting, mountain-biking, mountain-uni-cycling, canoeing, deep water solo climbing, mountaineering and rock climbing.

The scariest film was of a female base jumper - this is where you throw yourself off a very high mountain then open a parachute just before you meet the ground - very scary stuff - she was the top of her sport and then had an accident which she was lucky to survive. She fractured her leg in 33 places and was going through surgery to be able to walk again. It was very interesting to hear her psychology behind jumping and also her thoughts on the accident.

There was also a great film of a young lady biologist who was interested in observing a group of wolves who had never had any contact with humans - her film footage of the wolves was spectacular.

Needless to say we were extremely surprised and very pleased to see that there was a climbing film called 'Committed To Grit' which was part of a film based in The Peak District on climbing at Burbage and Stanage Edge. It was really nice to see the Peak District countryside again! It was also impressive to see one young chap climbing a new route called 'The Promise' which is the hardest route in England and is graded E10.

The whole Festival was an excellent opportunity to see some adventure sports, we think that there will be some showings in England too, so if you get chance we would certainly recommend attending. We think we shall both be looking for an opportunity to try some instruction in ice-climbing at some point very soon!

Well we are currently acclimatizing to the colder weather - it has been around -3 degrees today and it looks like we are expecting more snow over the next couple of days.
As we are awaiting our first big dump of snow we have posted for you this week a picture from the bridge at the end of Banff Avenue looking towards the mountains that we took when we were over in Banff in March this year.

That's about all for this week, next week we shall hopefully be able to post more snow pictures and in a couple of weeks we shall be off to the ski hill and will certainly share some pictures with you.

Enjoy your week and we look forward to hearing your news.
Love Rachael, Shaun, Harley and Phantom
xx

Fletcher Creek and Flurries

The news of the week is that we have had SNOW. It started on Wednesday night as a flurry then appeared to be getting in to a blizzard, then we woke up on Thursday and it had all gone!

Here is a quick snap we took of our back yard from the deck. Locals seem to think that the snow is on its way next week and apparently there is already a base of 80cm at the ski hill car park. We have got a ski and snowboard carrier for the truck.

Some exciting news we have received from England - Rachael's mum has had a photograph published on the BBC Look North website. Well done - famous landscape photographer in the making - check out the picture here - Derwent Dams by Helen Hill.

We met up with a couple of our friends for an early breakfast & coffee yesterday and went out for a hike where only the locals seem to know. It was on the way to Kaslo heading north on the Kootenay Lake to a location called Fletcher Creek. It was a beautiful hideaway place with a beach and a lovely waterfall. In the spring time the snow melt makes the waterfall swell - so we shall go back then to take another picture for you. It is not very often we get chance to have a picture taken together so we thought we would post this one for you.

We came across a funny story in our local paper which we thought you might like to hear about.

It was reported that two City of Nelson Police stopped a car in town on a Saturday night as they suspected they were driving under the influence of either liquor or drugs. The driver was handcuffed and put in the back of the police cruiser for questioning a bit later. The police then decided to investigate the car and passenger. Whilst this was underway, the arrested man in the back of the police car managed to clamber through the small hatch from the rear of the car into the drivers seat and steal the police car, of course, whilst remaining firmly handcuffed. Harry Houdini would've been proud of this dude. Presumably all of this happened in true Police Squad style. It was reported that the police car and new driver were recovered shortly afterwards. It could only happen in Nelson! This was a big news story as there is so little crime here, people leave their doors open, leave bikes, canoes, power tools unlocked in their gardens. They leave cars unlocked, with windows open and belongings left on the seats. Needless to say we can't bring ourselves to adopt this haphazard approach to security.

This week is going to be a busy one again, Shaun is finishing off some more of his pottery creations ready to be glazed and Rachael is finishing off her jewellery projects so we shall take some pictures to share with you when we have our finished products.

We also have tickets for the Banff Film Festival which is a three day event coming to Nelson on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. At the moment the titles of the films haven't been released but we have been told to expect some films on hiking, climbing, paddling and various other adrenalin-fuelled activities - we shall let you know next week what was on.

We hope you enjoy this weeks news and as always we look forward to hearing from you soon. Feel free to let us know if there is anything you would like us to post or tell you about in future blog posts?

Love Rachael, Shaun, Phantom & Harley

xx

PS. Just a quick message for The Foster Clan - your email address is still returning our emails, not sure if there is a problem your end - please let us know if you have an alternative email address.

Happy 50th Birthday - Big Orange Bridge

This week the Nelson Bridge or Big Orange Bridge (BOB) celebrated its 50th birthday. It was opened on 7th November 1957. The Mayor of Nelson recreated the opening of the bridge and from an article in our local paper reported that after the ribbon was cut by the Mayor the Kootenay Lake Vintage Car Club drove over the bridge escorted by Nelson City Police in cars from the period. Apparently over 4000 cars crossed the bridge on the day it opened. In the 1950's the bridge cost $4million and took about two years to build. It was originally silver in colour has three trusses and 15 steel girders. There were also toll booths as the crossing cost 50 cents for a one way trip, today the use of the bridge is free.

The first picture shows BOB from Lakeside park and the second shows it from the boat launch at the park.

Rachael has just returned from a weekend conference in Kelowna which is about 4 hours north west from Nelson. It was an Optometry conference which was held in a really smart 5 star hotel.

The highlights of the trip were the wine tasting evening that was hosted by ten of the local Okanagan wineries, the luxury hotel and the four course dinner dance we had on Saturday night. Oh and I guess I learnt a bit more about optometry too!

Today has been a Bank Holiday for us here in Canada for Remembrance Day. We get a Bank Holiday every month except for February apparently.

The weather has turned finally, after beautiful sunny Autumn days we have had a whole day of rain. But the positive side of this is that we have snow on the tops of the mountains and the ski slope is starting to get a good covering.

The local forecasters have said that the snow will come to town in the third week of this month.

It has been a slow news week this week but we have been busy at our night classes and badminton club.

That is all for this week - we hope you enjoy reading the blog and we always look forward to hearing from you.

Love Rachael, Shaun, Phantom & Harley

xx

The Ski Swap

November is here and we seem to be seeing the start of the 'ski swap' season. This was a new one to us and so we decided to join in the fun. The idea is in the name really but if you have any ski / snowboard equipment you would like to sell you take it down to the ski swap venue 2 hours in advance of the sale. The volunteers there then charge you $2 to put it into the sale. The sale lasts for 2 hours but it seemed that people started queuing to get in for the best bargains about an hour early!

We really went to see what was happening but came away having found that some of the local outdoor stores also have stalls there of clothing and equipment. Shaun found some new boarding boots and coat which were half price as they were 'last years colours' how black and brown can be so last year I am not really sure but hey we didn't mind! Rachael found a new water & wind proof jacket for running again less than half price and the even better news was that there was no taxes charged on your purchases either.
There is another event happening in a couple of weeks which we will probably go to, then starts the season for craft fayres ready for xmas.

This week we have joined the Nelson Badminton Club and attended our first session. There were about 16 people there and 5 courts we could use. We started playing at 7pm and played continously until 9pm moving round to play with different folks. Everyone was really friendly and guess what - there was an English chap there - these Brits get everywhere!

Needless to say it took a couple of days to recover having not played for a number of years!

We also discovered that the Canadians don't know what a shuttle cock is - they call it a tweet or a bird.

On the subject of different words Shaun also found out at work that the guys didn't know what 'Blue Tak' was, apparently over here it is called poster putty.

The weather is now around 7 degrees during the day and zero at night and it is forecast that this will continue to cool down until we are due to get a big dump of snow the third week in November.

Later this week Rachael is off to Kelowna, about 4 hours from here, for an optometry conference. It is being held at a 5 star hotel and includes evening entertainment so it should be interesting. I think I have signed up for sessions on 'Marketing and Selling Frames', 'Contact Lens Fitting' and 'Managing Your Optometry Office'. Just a million miles away from dietetics.

Oh and obviously I have signed up for the evening entertainment and the wine tasting!

Looking back at last week Halloween was a hoot! The children who came along to the door didn't just carry a little bag to collect their candies they carried HUGE bin bags or pillow cases! One group of older kids who came to the door when Shaun was in got a big handful of candies each from us then Shaun said "well you have got some candies, what have you got for me?" one kid put his hand into his HUGE bag and gave him a bag of crisps - how cute!

Our pumpkin is still doing well sat out on the deck looking out at passers by. Apparently people leave their pumpkins out until they start to put out their xmas decorations in a couple of weeks - we shall be off to Walmart to buy some new fairy lights for the outside of the house - must keep away from the 20 ft inflatable santas!

Well, I didn't know what picture to include for you on the blog this week but when I was flicking through the images currently on my camera I came across this one of our Photo Editor in action at Kokanee Provincial Park.

Next week I am looking for your suggestions - what would you like to know more about?

More local Nelson history? More local interest stories from our newspapers? More of our adventures? More pictures?

Let us know and we shall incorporate your ideas.

Hope you enjoy this weeks blog and we always enjoy your replies. Keep in touch.

Love Rachael, Shaun, Harley and Phantom

xx