BC FERRIES HAS IT IN FOR ME

And so our great British Adventure begins…

Where to start? Well, being a conventional sort of gal, I think I’ll take the usual route and start safely at the beginning of our trip – the morning of Wednesday, October 22, 2004.

After months of planning and last-minute paperwork, Ray and I were finally off to start three years in Cambridge, England, where Ray will do his PhD in Mechanical Engineering and I potter about, hopefully as an employed provider of grub. We and our parents set off from Gibsons for the 8:30 Langdale Ferry, which most of you will know is essentially the only link between the Sunshine Coast and Vancouver. Got to the ferry extra early to make sure we got a spot, but we weren’t too worried either way – the 8:30 boat should get us to Vancouver by 9:30, giving us scads of time to make our 3pm flight to London. Ha!

Turns out that despite carefully planning almost every mile of our trip, down to how we would get from Heathrow Airport in London to Shropshire, England and back to Cambridge, good ‘ol BC Ferries thwarted us and we soon were dismayed to find out that the boat – the ONLY boat – was broken down. She had limped out of Langdale for the first sailing but had yet to make her way back to the coast, and time was getting short. After spending the better part of the morning with growing consternation – still no ferry – we realized that if we didn’t do something right away, we would miss our flight. Enter the Gambier Island Water Taxi – a wee little boat (think about the size of a kitchen table) was called upon to take us across the water. As our luggage took up most of the room in the boat, only Mom could accompany us, leaving all of us in tears and as we pulled away from the dock my last sight of the coast was very unhappy parents.

Never mind, we Zimmermans and Grouts are a hardy stock, and we were relieved to at least be on our way. On our way, that is, until about 500 m from shore in Horseshoe Bay (directly in the path of the incoming Bowen Island ferry, I might add) we ran out of fuel. I kid you not. Luckily, our water taxi cabin had a small jerry can of spare fuel, so after much sloshing and cursing we were on our way again. Flagged a taxi once we were on dry land again, and were finally off to YVR. We actually made pretty good time, got ourselves checked in and then had time to hang about the airport and wait.

Meanwhile, our intrepid parents (minus Mom, who was with us) had managed to catch the ferry, still running much behind, and roared out to the airport exactly 5 minutes before we had to go through security. You see, this sort of timing doesn’t always occur only in movies! After more tearful hugs and kisses, we headed off to the plane and took off without incident.

I thought it was apropos that the only city visible through the clouds as we flew out, heading up over the Northwest Territories, Iceland and Greenland, was Kamloops – for those of you who don’t know the significance, I spent two summers there doing my MSc. research on cattle and it is a place near to both Ray and my hearts. I could even make out the range station as we flew overhead, and I waved to “my” cows. Then the clouds took over, and we carried on our journey.

Not much interesting to report of our flight – bad movies, questionable food, the usual stuff. I am pleased to report that Ray makes and excellent pillow and I am thankful that he is the larger of the two of us! I don’t know about him, but I slept quite well. Woke up to find us flying over the Hebrides and Scotland – lots of greenery – and then it was onto London. Luckily the skies were clear and we had a great view of the Thames, London Eye and Buckingham Palace as we descended into Heathrow.

After going through Immigration and collecting all our bags, we were relieved to see my great-aunt and uncle, Iris and Jos Bevan, there to greet us and take us home with them to the village of Kinnerley, in Shropshire County. They had rented a van and driver, which was most excellent because we could visit and just take in the English countryside on our way across the island. I have to say that Shropshire is absolutely beautiful – stereotypical England with hedge-lined higgledy-piggledy roads everywhere between farmers’ fields and small villages. We didn’t take nearly enough pictures, but you can see some here. Promise to take more on our next visit when we are not so jet-lagged! We were blessed with stunning weather during our stay, and were able to make the most of our time exploring all over the region.