Summer's here

Phoebe swimming through the final shards of ice on Allen Bill pond

Our nimble spring has outpaced winter and passed the baton to summer. We’ve had two weeks of sunshine and mid-twenties temperatures now. The grass is growing and the Aspens are carpet-bombing the lawn with discarded catkins. Thousands of well-heeled Harley riders throb on to our highway at the weekend, along with skeins of cyclists on the road margin. The grills are uncovered, steaks are sizzling, and beer is cooling.

Our eponymous geese are honking their way back to the lakes, swallows dart amongst youthful mosquitos, and bears are busy cleaning up winter’s deceased wildlife.

Of course this isn’t really summer – that starts in July – but it’s a pretty good facsimile.

After a four hour ride to a swish hotel in the foothills

Fine dining. Succulent double-decked elk burger.

Spring and winter duke it out

Sheltering on the mountain, drinking tea with the pups.

Most of last week was blessed with bright spring days, warm breezes, and green shoots of recovery all over the lawn. Unfortunately, the Alberta winter is a tough beast. At the weekend it got back up off the floor and laid into young spring with a potent one-two of a foot of snow and a 25 degree drop in temperature. But we all know winter will tire eventually and today, Monday, the snow cover is wilting under a blazing sun. By the weekend we are promised 18C(plus).

The blizzard meant breaking out the snowshoes on Sunday to hike up Moose Mountain. In the evening I had to dig a path to the grill to cook steaks.

The view from the barbeque gazebo during the steak cookery

The traditional method of cooling a Steam Whistle pilsner

Flying visit

Huge wisteria in the Cotswolds

Air Transat’s 1980’s throwback A330 with cathode ray entertainment screens dropped out of a 1000 foot cloudbase at Gatwick into a sodden grey spring day. The South Terminal seems to be in the middle of a massive refit and even for a native englishman with reasonable eyesight, finding the car rental was a quest and a half. I piloted my (also) grey Vauxhall roller skate out of the airport straight onto the back of a ten mile tailback on the M23. Welcome to Blighty.

The visit was chiefly to catch up with relatives, past and present work colleagues and village neighbours before I forget what they look like. I did notice a few changes since we left nearly two years ago, apart from the new mess at Gatwick. Maidenhead has a new office building, the New Forest has yet more signage, an ailing ex prime minister has succumbed, and a Costa coffee small Americano has soared from £2.29 to £2.79.  But the rightmost three wash basins in the men’s toilets at the east bound M3 Winchester services are still out of action.

A fun trip, but six days is too short.

Chaos at Gatwick

New street furniture in the New Forest

Sheep River

This is the road into Sheep River provincial park. As you can see from the sign, it’s closed to motorised traffic for half the year, but with Easter weather as great as this, there’s nothing stopping you walking or biking it. Because it’s an hour and a half from Calgary there are very few visitors. We cycled for ninety minutes deep into the park and saw no-one.

The only inhabitants were the eponymous bighorn sheep, a few eagles, and flocks of beautiful Bohemian Waxwings.

Sheep beware

Another in the occasional series, “signs unlikely to be seen in the UK”. Some may say this one might be useful in more agricultural parts of rural Wales, but I couldn’t possibly comment. It is in the Bluerock Wildlands provincial park, 45 minutes south of us. It might seem an unfair hunt, man versus sheep, but these are not the farmland wool-and-mutton bleaters you are familiar with, these are wild bighorn sheep, huge curly-horned beasts that can reach 140 Kg in weight. This park is an oasis for them. From December to May the only road is closed to traffic, so once the snow disappears, you can go an see them in their natural habitat – if you have a mountain bike, or a stout pair of boots.