Wines from British Columbia

With a few days of self-catering ahead of us, we picked up a bottle or two as we were transported round the Okanagan Falls wineries last week. Since we are just about to consign the last empty bottle to the recycling bin, there are a few of them which are worth mention if any of you are travelling in this part of the world - probably outside Jimmy C's budget but not all of us are .......

The Drier Riesling from Syncromesh wineries was one of Linda's favourites - they had an eclectic selection of single vineyard Rieslings which were all interesting but we settled for the Drier because it suited our taste.

Kraze Legz winery had some great wines and we enjoyed a few of their products but their 2011 All That Jazz red was a great drinking wine.

Liquidity Wines - owned by Iain MacDonald (no guesses as to his ancestry) - was a class act - both in terms of the winery and the bistro but also the art displayed in the winery. We enjoyed a couple of their wines but special mention for their 2014 Estate Chardonnay.

There are something like 300 wineries in the Okanagan Valley and we only scratched the surface in one small area - which is a very good reason to return sometime soon. However if you see BC wines on sale in your local bottle shop then give them a try - they may not be great but they are sure to be very drinkable.

Canadian Pacific

It is impossible to travel in this region without learning about and being impressed by the people who were responsible for the development of the CP transcontinental line and those who have kept it operating over the years.

We have - inadvertently I must admit - touched on many of the iconic elements of the history of the railway during our journey and - at the risk of giving Jimmy C another stick with which he can castigate me both in print and over a bottle of wine - it has proved fascinating.

From the site of the Golden Spike at Craigellachie to the railway museum at Revelstoke and the crew change point and the Spiral Tunnels at our current temporary home in Field we cannot get away from the CPR.

We see the trains possibly a dozen or more times a day - whether running alongside the highway or holding us up at a level crossing for 15 minutes or more - and realise that they stretch from 1.5 to 3.0 km long moving at an average of about 40km  per hour.

On our way to Lake Louise today we stopped in Kicking Horse Pass to look out over the spiral tunnels which now allow these behemoths to negotiate the climb over the continental divide.  The original 'Big Hill' which the trains had to climb when the railway was first built had a gradient of nearly twice that specified so it was eventually replaced by the Spiral tunnels while the TransCanada now uses the 'Big Hill' for road traffic.

Standing at the viewpoint you can see the train pass below you, round a curve and enter the tunnel, complete the spiral and exit the tunnel while the tail end is still passing below the view point - quite an engineering feat.
 

A sunny day in the Rockies

Waking to bright blue skies this morning we were finally able to appreciate the size and majesty of the mountains that surround us here in Field. Mount Stephen which dominates the southern side of the town is 3199m and an impressive lump of rock:

Heading north on the TransCanada after an early breakfast, we got to Lake Louise before the worst of the crowds and after a brief stop at the Visitor Centre we managed to find a space in the public car park - the queues were just building as we arrived and headed down to the lakeside.

This is another emerald coloured lake which was named after one Queen Victoria's daughters. It has an enormous monstrosity of a hotel at one end which is thankfully dwarfed by the mountains all around but the lake attracts an enormous number of visitors every year. We had decided to hike the trail to Lake Agnes - about 3.5km each way with an altitude gain of 385m - assuming that many of the other visitors would stick to the lakeshore.

Unfortunately we discovered that this is one of the most popular trails in the whole of the Canadian Rockies and we had to share the trail and the views with a steady flow of people. However it made for some great people watching with representatives of almost every nationality you could imagine - from the very young, both enthusiastic and less so, to the elderly, some of whom were setting a fair pace up the hill side. In addition there was every shape and size from those who could have run the whole way to a few who made you want to look for the nearest defibrillator. 

We made a quick stop at Mirror Lake which sits beneath the Big Beehive

and then walked up to Lake Agnes which was - obviously - named after a lady named Agnes although there is some question about which of two ladies, who claim the honour, was actually the lake's patron. 

We managed to find a table at the teahouse for a coffee which took a while due to the press of business but we were sitting in the sunshine looking over the lake - so not much to complain about.

By this point we had climbed to 2135m above sea level. The journey down to the lakeside was a little easier if no less busy, but by the time we got to the car park it seemed that Armageddon had arrived - hordes of people, competition for car park places, queues of cars in and out of the car park and cars parked all the way along the highway - and this is just the start of the season - definitely time to leave.

We stopped in the village for some essential shopping and an ice cream - by this time it was around 21C in the sunshine and no wine bar to pour us a glass of rose. So back down the highway to our peaceful retreat and a cold beer or two.

Places to stay

It seems that the holiday season started early here - finding accommodation has proved a challenging task - although we have been very fortunate in the places we have found. We are currently in a self catering apartment in the lower ground floor of a house in Field which has everything we need and is far enough away from the tourist centres to keep us sane.

Field started life as a railway town - both for the construction and then the continuing operations of the Canadian Pacific and then became the headquarters for Yoho National Park.

We are surrounded by a number of peaks over 3000m but have only caught the occasional sight of them so far because of some low cloud. However the sun is shining this morning and it looks like we may get some of those mountain views that we have missed out on so far.

Yesterday we hiked around Emerald lake - not hard to see how it got it's name:

Despite the cool weather there were a good number of people on the trail and in addition to the views, it was great to see the variety of different flowers - particularly at the top end of the lake where we found a least two different orchid species, a couple of others that we recognised and a good number that were new to us.

On the way we had stopped off at the Natural Bridge - a demonstration of the power of the water flowing in the Kicking Horse River:

 

Mountains

Driving up the TransCanada towards Revelstoke yesterday, we caught our first glimpse of the real mountains in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies - as we looked at these snow covered peaks we were enjoying bright sunshine and 24C and even though it cooled down in the evening, it was still around 16C when we ventured out of the hotel after breakfast. We stopped briefly at the farmers market and picked up some essential supplies - fresh bread, salad, local fruit and veg and some jam before dropping into the Railway Museum (more of this later) on our way to the Visitor Centre at the Revelstoke Dam.

This is a fairly impressive structure - the dam is 175M high, while the lake is in the region of 28,000 acres or more than twice the total acreage in all of BC. The visitor Centre was well laid out and the elevator to the top of the dam provided some great views while powering a large part of BC's power requirements.

Back on the road north and the weather changed. as the clouds started to obscure the mountain tops and the rain started  to fall, the temperature also dropped from 16C down to about 8C as we crossed the Rogers Pass. I suddenly realised that I had fallen foul of the dress code again - tee shirt and shorts were not really the appropriate dress for these conditions.

By the time we arrived in Field - our home for the next few days - it was wet and cool which made us very grateful for the underfloor heating in our garden apartment at the Van Horne Guest house.

The Kettle Valley Railway Trail and onwards to the mountains

Despite the noise coming from the newlyweds in the neighbouring room, we both managed to sleep well and again woke to a beautiful sunny morning and an early start- they were just unlocking the doors as we arrived at the Grape Leaf café in Naramata for breakfast - a meal which kept us going for most of the day.

After we checked out and packed up the car we walked across the road and up the hill to the KVR trail and walked about 8km of the section from Penticton to Chute Lake. It was a great walk on a very gentle incline and although it was popular with cyclists we had it to ourselves for long sections. There were great views over Okanagan Lake and the surrounding hills and valleys and despite the warnings we didn't see any rattlers.

And if we had thought to bring a bottle of wine and some glasses we found the perfect rest stop!

Then it was back to the car and Highway 97 North towards the mountains - along the side of a variety of lakes as we headed up to Revelstoke and our fist view of the Rockies - still warm and sunny here as we checked into the Regent Hotel in time for a cool beer and a plate of Nachos.

A bright sunny day in Wine Country!

 Where else would you want to be? The view from our room first thing in the morning was enough to get us up early and down to town for breakfast.

We had booked a wine tour for the day and had time for a leisurely start as they were not picking us up until 10.30 but Linda spent most of the free time on the phone to the bank because they had stopped her credit card - can't really complain since we had forgotten to tell them we were travelling, although not sure why it had taken them a week to react.

We started our tastings at 10.30 and in company with Dino - our guide who was a retired hockey pro and head teacher who was a great guide if somewhat annoying particularly when he compared one of the rose wines to the colour of Linda's hair - and two Canadian ladies of a certain age - one of whom worked for PWC while the other was an Professor at a Vancouver college we managed 5 different wineries through the day along with a lunch stop at one of the them. Think there were at least 20 different wines - some were very good while others were not to our taste - however the wineries were all in fairly stunning locations and occasionally had some impressive artwork as well.

We made it back to Quidni in the late afternoon with time to relax before dropping in to the winery to taste their wines as well. Met a couple of other guests - a pair of forty-something newly weds and ended up sharing a pizza order and a few glasses of wine with them on the deck in the evening sunshine because it had been another long day and driving anywhere was definitely not an option.