Day 360
Old friends
Leaving Murray and Ingrid's was hard, we had been there less than 20 hours but it felt like saying goodbye to close friends. They had welcomed us into their busy home and taken time to get to know us and help us relax. They had also drawn us a map (we do love a map) of a quiet backroad route rather than re-joining the 22 straight away. It was fantastic, within minutes we had seen a moose crossing the road ahead of us, and all morning we barely saw a car. We re-joined the main road around lunch time so stopped at a café Murray had recommended. Yes you read that right, a real live café. Clearly somewhere the local cyclists, mums, retired, and Murray, hang out! It felt so like home.
The threatened rain started in earnest and we pushed on to our destination for the next few nights. We passed an interesting sight, lots of baseball caps hung on fence posts, several hundred we guessed, then a few miles later it was hundreds of teddies on display. We wondered what it was all about. We later discovered that in the early 1900s Canada had run a re-education programme for the indigenous population that shockingly meant that as soon as a child reached the age of 5 they were taken from their parents to live and be schooled in re-education centres. The teddies we saw represented one for each child’s body that was found in a mass grave at one of the sites. Hard to comprehend.
The rain got heavier and the road busier as we neared Cochrane. Sanctuary was near! Now, if you had met me any time in my 30s or 40s you would have found a woman obsessed with mountain biking. If I wasn’t asleep or at work then generally I would be out on my bike. I started riding mountain bikes as soon as they arrived in the UK. In its early days it was very much a male dominated sport so my riding companions were all male. One of the guys was Mark, with whom I spent hour after hour riding our local trails, then heading off to discover the man-made trails in Wales and Scotland. About 10 years ago Mark and his wonderful wife Jen emigrated to Canada and Tom and I had invited ourselves to stay! Wet and somewhat weary we were warmly greeted. Jen ran us both a bubble bath with plastic ducks whilst we drank a much needed cuppa! The following few days were a blur of catching up, resting, watching mountain bike videos on YouTube of the local trails, getting an education about the evolution of the dinosaur from Barney, Mark and Jen’s 11 year old son, chatting with Mark’s mum on a visit from the UK, servicing the bikes and providing a warm lap for any of Jen’s 10 cats to rest on. It was bliss. Despite having a busy career and home life Mark and Jen spoilt us rotten and insisted we stay as long as we wanted. It was very hard to tear ourselves away, but after 4 days we decided we had to hit the road once more. We miss them all so much!
