Fall in Canada

How high?

From an Aussie Spring to a Canadian Fall in an instant (well half a day) courtesy of a trans-Pacific flight - we packed the shorts away, put our woollies on and braved the chill air. It was a cold foggy morning but by early afternoon things had cleared up. You'll have to look very close at this photo to see the figure of a man at the foot of this totem pole - the biggest one in the world, or so the plaque at the base would have it. On checking with that font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, it appears that there are several other contenders for the title. Nevertheless at 128 foot tall and carved from a single tree trunk it's pretty impressive. We found this at Beacon Hill Park in Victoria, British Columbia and we got stiff necks looking up at it!

Got a match?

So this is a typical scene at the waterfront on a British Columbia morning - fog and logs, everywhere we went the beaches seemed to be strewn with logs some of them of enormous size. I guess a couple of centuries of intensive logging using the rivers to convey the haul has meant that the surrounding seas have been littered with tree trunks. The rivers are no longer utilised in this way due to environmental concerns but the residue sits on the seashore bleaching in the sunlight (when the fog has lifted!) The following morning we joined a small band of parkrunners at Clover Point one of the first parkruns to get going in Canada - they've been at it just over a year now!
This was another foggy morning but a pleasant seaside run nonetheless.

Where is everybody?

And what's that on the front of my running vest - a number? With all the parkrunning we've been doing (you don't need a number for those) I'd almost forgotten how to pin a number into my vest. Following the Clover Point Parkrun in Victoria we travelled upcoast to Duncan where we ran the Cowichan Classic 10K, a wonderful race through trails and trees. Having run the day before I started steadily but soon found myself picking off the runners ahead until I found myself on my own and overall winner of the 10K event! (I wasn't actually the first runner home, there were two ahead of me who were running a total of 15K on the same course but they showed up in a different set of results.)

And what better to refresh our weary selves with than beer from Red Arrow brewers of Duncan, British Columbia. We had some very hoppy beers and were very happy.

The Arrow hit the spot!