Playlist
King Crimson – Starless and Bible Black
King Crimson - Red
Rush – A Farewell to Kings
Roxy Music – For Your Pleasure
Roxy Music - Starnded
Roxy Music – Country Life
Allan Holdsworth – Wardenclyffe tower
Allan Holdsworth – Hard Hat Area
Day two of our train trip and we were picked up from the hotel around 7:30 and taken back to the station, leaving Kamloops around 8am...
The train was now twice as long, having joined with another travelling from Calgary to Vancouver at this half way point and, once again, I spent much of the trip hanging out the window taking pictures – so much so that I missed the one bear sighting of the two days – there was much excitement inside the carriage apparently but I was outside, oblivious...
It made Anne’s day though...
Despite the route starting off in dry desert like terrain, this was actually more enjoyable than yesterday – for a start the weather was a lot better...
We crossed the Thomson River into the lands of the First nations (that’s Red Indians to you and me) and a small wooden church which symbolises the success of Christain Missionaries in the area...
From Kamloops, there are two railway lines, Canadian National and Canadian Pacific...
From Kamloops to Vancouver, the 1885 Canadian Pacific (CP) and the later 1917 Canadian National (CN) trans-continental routes run parallel, usually on opposite sides of the river....
For the first 58 miles west of Kamloops, the Rocky Mountaineer uses CN tracks in both directions, but between the town of Basque and Vancouver there is 'directional running' where CN & CP co-operate...
All westbound trains (like ours) travel on CN tracks on one side of the river, and all eastbound trains including the eastbound Rocky Mountaineer make their way along the CP tracks on the other side....
Our first sightseeing opportunity was the spectacular and bright blue Kamloops Lake, at the end of which the train ran alongside the Thompson River....
The countryside here became even more arid than that surrounding Kamloops and we passed Ashcroft, apparently the driest town in Canada....
In Black Canyon, named after a black lava cliff, we crossed the Thompson via a steel girder bridge and the scenery changed again, from dry and sandy, back to rocky with pine trees....
Then on to Avalanche Alley travelling along the very edge of the river under a sheer cliff wall with avalanche protection sheds in several places....
Around midday, we got to the meeting point of the Thomson and Fraser rivers and the train crossed another bridge, giving as superb view of the rivers coming together, one clear and blue, one muddy and full of silt – this is because the latter doesn’t pass through any lakes – doing so provides an opportunity for the river to deposit its silt content...
On to the aptly named “Hells' Gate”, the narrowest and fastest-flowing point of the Fraser River. On the right on the far bank was the Hell's Gate cafe, with a suspension footbridge across the river below the train and a cable car over the river and up the mountain....
Of course we couldn’t get off the train...
By mid afternoon, we were speeding through a wide flat valley, with farms and greenhouses starting to appear, past the site of Fort Langley, just visible through the trees...
Around 5 we finally started the approach to Vancouver with the train slowing down through the freight cars in Thornton Yard and curving right over a very long, low steel bridge across the Fraser River, from which we could see a much higher arched road bridge on the left, which also carried the Vancouver 'Skytrain' metro....
We made our way through the suburbs to the station where our bags and a taxi awaited us and it was a 20 minute, $20 journey to our accommodation, an excellent guest house near the trendy area of Kitsilano...
We were now almost 700 miles from Calgary, though in the ten days we had had the car, I had driven more than 1,000 miles in total...
Now we were going to be based in Vancouver for the rest of today and the next five days – and I was looking forward to some “stability”...
After dumping our bags, we walked the 15 minutes down to English Bay where the young people of Vancouver were jogging around and enjoying beach volleyball...
We continued our stroll on round the seawall and eventually came to Granville Island...
By this time, most of the shops were closed but we dined at Tony’s Fish and Oyster Bar, before walking back up to our B&B – the whole walk was around five miles and very enjoyable indeed...
I wrote up my notes re the last few days while Anne read – no telly in this suite – I spent some time listening to music before we turned in, looking forward to exploring Vancouver over the next few days...
Highlight of the day : Train journey pt 2...
