Cold Weather and Hot Springs

The City of Nelson BC taken by our Photo Editor a couple of weeks ago to show you the beautiful Autumn colours we have in town. This week many of the leaves have fallen and we have had great fun walking along paths full of colour.

We have however had our first frost this week and boy was it cold! Whose idea was it to move to a cold country? There is no snow yet apart from the very tops of the mountains.

The local ski swap takes place in the next couple of weeks so we have been advised to get ourselves along to see if we can pick up some good deals on pre-loved equipment for skiing and boarding.

The blog may be a slightly condensed version this week as we have just got back from spending the morning at Ainsworth Hot Springs and we are feeling very relaxed and tired!

From information on their website the springs originate in the Cody Caves area, which is directly above and to the west of Ainsworth Hot Springs. The water works its way down through porous rock to a depth of 1-1/2 to 2 kilometers. The water picks up temperatures at a rate of 40 C° per km down until it strikes what is know as the lakeshore fault.
This fault is an inpervious layer of rock lying at an angle of 45 to 50 degrees from Ainsworth Hot Springs to a point directly below the Cody Caves. Hydraulic pressure forces ther water up along the fault where it emerges at Ainsworth Hot Springs.

The facility includes a warm pool which is maintained around 36 degrees and a small very cold plunge pool which Shaun went to try out. There are also the caves where the water is maintained at 42 degrees which was really nice.

We spent the morning in the pools then had lunch at the restaurant and now we have come home for a rest. I think we shall be regular visitors there.

We are looking forward to putting out our pumpkin on Halloween Night for all the trick or treaters to see and we have been to the store to buy bags of candy to give out. We may even dress up as ghosts in white sheets when we answer the door to the kids!

We thought we would get in to the spirit of the event as they don't celebrate Bonfire Night over here so all the big parties are for Halloween.

The kittens are well and keeping us entertained and we almost had a new addition to the Davidson clan this week when Rachael went to the SPCA centre to check out a lovely dog - 4 year old Black Lab - Shaun was quite relieved when the dog was adopted by another family!

Here is a picture of Clive our Explorer at Kokanee Provincial Park, this is where there is a public boat launch and a really pretty beach.

Well that is all for this week, hope you enjoyed the shortened version but we promise to write more next week.

We look forward to hearing your news as always

Love Rachael, Shaun, Phantom and Harley

xx

Cow on the Moo-ve

Last weekend we went on a really beautiful drive up the Slocan Valley to check out the autumn leaves and get some nice pictures for the blog. Here is Slocan Lake, you can see in the picture a spring board in the swimming area of the lake near the beach. The sun was out and it was relatively warm so we took a picnic and sat on a beach near South Slocan where in the summer locals take their water floats (old inner-tubes) to set off down the river. Apparently its quite a tradition to take a spare inflatable to carry your beers in as you float down river!

We then continued along the valley to Slocan but en route we saw the funniest sight that we felt we must share with you. Travelling down the highway in the opposite direction we saw a blue pick-up truck on the horizon. As it got nearer we could see what looked like a set of ladders which were in the bed and resting on the cab. However, as the truck got even closer and closer at the last second as it passed us we couldn't believe what we had just seen and turned to each other and both said "did you see that?" Wondering if we really did see what we thought we had seen. What we had originally thought were ladders actually turned out to be a cow stood in the flat bed of the pick-up with its head over the cab looking out. It wasn't just a small cow it was a huge fully grown cow - catching flies in its teeth as it went along!

Shaun was telling this story to a friend at work who mentioned he had seen a really funny cow song on YouTube - we have embedded the movie below so click play, we would certainly recommend the few minutes it lasts to check it out. It is called 'Cows With Guns'. The animation is so funny it's little addictive to watch over and over...

The pumpkin party we went to this week was great - there were about 20 people there and all came with their pumpkins and weapons for carving. Some people there had obviously had a lot of experience and carved some very detailed designs. Shaun did a lovely design which we have a picture of here for you. We also have included a group shot of all the pumpkins that were carved. Whilst we were there we learnt that when the kids go trick or treating if you have your pumpkin outside your front door they know to knock as you will have some sweets for them! So in preparation we are going to the store to get a huge bag of sweets and lollies.

Back to the subject of autumn colours, do you like the new header to the NWN blog? The picture was taken from Lakeside park looking up the hillside - did any of you spot our house on there? It is the wooden house that has the big A frame windows - have another look! We are planning on taking a photo weekly from the same spot so we can update the header when the snow comes. Here is a picture of Lakeside park in Nelson, along Rachael's running route.

We have noticed over the last few months that the Canadian english spoken and written is a little different to The Queen's English used in UK, so here are a few differences that we have noted that you may find interesting:
1. Fortnight - they don't know what this is at all, it's great to fool them with!
2. Articulated lorry - they have no idea on this one as they say truck.
3. Conkers - what a hoot, they only call them chestnuts and they have never heard of or played conkers!

4. Pavement - here is the road you drive on and the pavement we walk on in England is called a side-walk over here, so if you said you were driving on the pavement that wouldn't be weird at all!
5. Handbag - over here is a purse and a purse is called a wallet. That is just all wrong!
6. The boot of the car is the trunk here and the bonnet is the hood.
7. A clothes peg is called a clothes pin.
8. They don't have Bonfire Night which is a real shame - they don't get the whole Guy Falkes story and seem quite horrified when we explain all about him!

We managed to catch a great film over here on the Independant Film Channel (IFC), it's a bit like Film 4 in the UK and shows some great films. They showed The Full Monty, so naturally we had to watch it - it was nice to see Sheffield again, especially as we left behind our copy of the film we had on video as we no longer have one of those archaic video recorders.

We have had our winter tyres put on to the truck ready for the snow. The locals seem to think that it will be about a month before the deep snow appears in town. The ski hill opens on the 1st December. One of the girls Rachael works with has suggested we go back-country skiing with her husband. He is certainly looking forward to that but Rachael will just be happy staying on the nicely groomed relatively safe slopes!
At the ski hill they run a free course on avalanche awareness so that when you are off in the back-country you can recognise early if there are likely to be any avalanches, how to avoid them and also some survival techniques. This seems like a sensible idea.
Well, that's all for this week, hope you enjoy reading our adventures. We look forward to hearing your news.

Love Rachael, Shaun, Harley & Phantom
xx

Lights Out In Nelson

Things are still going well for us here but this week we thought we would include in the blog some of the things which haven't gone so well over here in the past few months - just so you know that things still go wrong here sometimes too!
1. Rachael managed to knock over a gallon pot of paint whilst decorating the spare room - thankfully we had dust sheets down on the carpet.
2. Shaun dropped a full 1L bottle of extra virgin olive oil out of the trunk of the car when unloading the shopping which as you can imagine took ages to clean up the oil slick.
3. Rachael then trapped her finger in the garage door.
4. One or both of the kittens - not sure which as they both looked as guilty as each other knocked one of our handmade vases over which we had carefully shipped over from UK. It was on the top of the piano. Unfortunately it is beyond repair now in about 100 pieces - here is a picture.

5. This week we experienced our first Nelson power 'outage'. This phenomenon happens quite frequently by all accounts and usually lasts between 5 minutes to a couple of hours. Well Wednesday evening turned out to be quite eventful Rachael had gone to her jewellery night class and Shaun had gone out for dinner with some clients from work. At 8pm just as Rachael was about to put drill to metal the lights went out and the power died - after waiting half an hour we decided to end the class for the night and everyone headed home in the dark. The whole of the town centre was in darkness, there were no traffic lights and it was really really dark! About a third of the city was affected including the area that our house is in.
Shaun was also having an interesting time with the clients as they all tried to eat their meals by candle light. You will be pleased to hear that the power did eventually come back at 8am the next morning just as we were leaving for work. By the time I arrived at work I was really looking forward to a nice cuppa! The cause of the outage was rumoured to be a lightening strike on a sub-station. In anticipation of the next imminent occurrence we now have replenished the propane in our BBQ so at least we can boil the kettle.
So as you can see rubbish things still happen even in Canada but really they are just minor irritations - albeit quite entertaining for our readers!

The excitement building over here at the moment is Halloween. It seems to be quite a big celebration, there are lots of pumpkins for sale in the stores ranging from moderately sized to gigantic monster pumpkins. We have been invited to a pumpkin carving party - you have to turn up with your own pumpkin and weapons of choice ready for carving your design. We shall take some pictures and post them next week. The hosts of the Halloween party have just had a new hot tub installed on their deck so we are also taking our swimming cozzies. This will be the first time we've ever been to a party with Lycra in hand.

We headed out for an easy hike over at Pilot Bay. After a nice trip on the ferry we went to visit the lighthouse which was built in 1905 to guide Paddle Boat Steamers on Kootenay Lake. It was decommissioned in 1993 and has since been renovated by a local heritage group. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the door to the lighthouse was open and you could climb the 2 flights of stairs to the top to look out.
The information board inside said that the lighthouse had been previously renovated in 1970 and the light had a 3.05 amp 12 volt bulb in a 250 millimeter lantern powered by two six volt battery packs. A photoelectric cell shut off the light during daylight hours to conserve power. The light had a characteristic one second of light and eleven seconds of dark. Should a lamp burn out the four position lamp changer would move the next lamp in to focal position. On the picture you can see Shaun at the top looking out across the lake.

Looking towards December when Whitewater opens, we have discovered that most of the outdoor shops in town will loan you demo skis for a day for $35 which they then take off the price of any equipment that you buy. They also take their range of skis to the hill to try as many pairs as possible in a weekend. So, these long-term snowboarders may turn to 2 planks of wood by the end of the season.

The weather this week has been a little bit changeable - we have seen temperatures up to 18 degrees during the day but then down to 2 degrees at night. The forecast is for our first overnight frost this week.

That is all our news for this week, next time we will post some photos of the autumn colours and of our tragic attempts at pumpkin carvings. As usual, we look forward to hearing all your news.

To quote Alan Titchmarsh "Whatever the weather this weekend, enjoy your garden, ta-ra"

Love Rachael, Shaun, Phantom & Harley
xx

Thanks Giving Weekend

HAPPY THANKS GIVING FROM THE STAFF AT NELSON WEEKLY NEWS

Well this week has been a week of congratulations - well done to my good friend Trish in Florida who has sucessfully passed her American Registered Nursing exams - excellent news for the best nurse I ever worked with!

Shaun and Rachael both passed their practical driving tests with flying colours. Shaun's examiner turned out to be a lady who lives just along our street. We are very pleased we passed as we are now UK and BC drivers. If we had failed we would have had our UK licences taken away and would have been unable to drive at all until the test was passed.

It is Thanks Giving weekend so we have a long weekend with Monday off work. Thanks Giving originates from giving thanks for the crops and goodness of the land - sound familiar? Yep it's Harvest Festival with a different name and a bit later in the season. It is traditional here to have a roast turkey dinner followed by pumpkin pie. Instead, we are going to have roast chicken and have bought a pumpkin pie to try. Not really very sure about it as it looks like blended carrot on top of a pastry base...we will let you know.

Shaun has a new website click http://www.shaundavidson.com/ to have a look, it includes several new galleries that you might want to check out. He has chosen a new look format which displays his work really well, hope you enjoy.

Summer Photo Competition

Thank you to those of you who entered our summer photo competition, we had a massive response of ten entries in total and enjoyed looking at every one of them. It took the photo editor literally seconds to come up with a winner. So without futher ado...

the winner of the 2007 NWN Summer Photo Comp is a joint entry by Glyn and Lucie from Sheffield and was selected for its comedy value and also its location of Filey Brigg cliffs in North Yorkshire which is one of our favourite spots, they submitted a series of two photos...

Well done Glyn and Lucie you have won the box of Nelson Brewing Company Faceplant beer, we shall be in touch about collection after 15th October when the production run starts. Unfortunately we are unable to ship outside Canada so you will have to collect in person. I understand NBC do a great tour of the brew house.

We also wanted to include a runner-up James Dixon from Halifax who sent in a picture of a homemade great big Yorkshire Pudding - we miss your Yorkshire pudds dude - this one looks particularly tasty although we are not so sure it was a toad in the hole - yum!

You will have chance to enter again as we are going to run a winter photo competition - so keep your camera ready for the best shots to enter. Well done again to Lucie, Glyn and James!

With winter in mind now the temperatures here have dropped and we have ordered our new winter tyres (Canadian spelling Tires) and steel rims along with studs in the tyres. As you can guess it is top priority not just for safety but more importantly to be able to get up the ski hill road, and back down again!

Ski season starts in 54 days so we will have to get some WD40 on Rachael's arthritic knees!

We have both had our first evening classes - Shaun sucessfully threw a couple of practice pots which he reports did look vaguely like vases, or may be bowls. Rachael went to her first jewellery making class and came away having learnt how to drill, saw and file a design in to brass and copper to make a pendant. Next week we are doing rivets and eventually progressing to working with silver and semi-precious stones. We think we shall be learning how to make pendants, rings and brooches.

We are eagerly awaiting the beautiful Autumn colours and shall post some pictures as soon as we get some blues skies and the trees show their best dress.

Must dash as we have found Last Of The Summer Wine AKA Three Men In A Bath on channel 374 here - off for my fix of Yorkshire.

Keep in touch.

Love Rachael, Shaun, Phantom and Harley xx