Today is a very sad day

Today is a very sad day

This is a very sad day. Sad. Very sad indeed. We’ll tell you all about it when we get back in the van, but uh it’s a sad day. [Music] This is Fort Langley Railway Station. It’s decommissioned now. It was decommissioned in 1980. It was built in 1915 by the Canadian Northern Railway. Um, they took it over, the Canadian National Railway Company took it over um when it formed in 1918. And what I really liked was in 1951, Princess Elizabeth and Prince Phillip came through here on the Royal Train. That’s pretty amazing. It’s a pretty little building. Really nice. and the actual main railway line runs beside it. So, um, this historic site, they actually moved this station about 250 m from its original location down to here to preserve it. Yeah. And today, why are we here? But we’re here because we’ve actually got our van in the garage not too far away from here. Um, and the very nice people at the garage uh dropped us off here cuz it was somewhere nice to come. So, it’s a really nice town, little town. Um, got some super little shops, cafes, food places. But the the problem that we have, well, there’s two problems really. One, it’s raining. Um but heyi ho, that’s just something that happens, isn’t it? The other thing is they’ve had a massive power cut in the whole town. So um we had our first cup of coffee by almost by candle light. Uh so yes, so we’re sort of like just mosying around this town in the rain trying to find some things to do. We we did want to go to Fort Langley, but that looked like it was closed probably because of the power cut, but we’ll check again in a bit. Um, hey, there we go. Such is life. Yes, it’s a cool place, Fort Langley, because it was uh it’s got an awful lot of British heritage here. The town was established as a trading post by the was it called the Hudson Trading Company, a British company. And um and they had the first ever steam ship um came here. It was built in Britain and um sailed across the Atlantic. and it came here and it was used to ferry stuff, produce and things between the mainland here, Vancouver and uh Vancouver Island and also to ferry produce and equipment and people for the gold rush of 1848, I think it was, wasn’t it? M so it’s got a very lot of history and another interesting fact is whilst we were walking up towards the fort we met a lady who was asking us if we knew about the extent of the uh power cut and um we obviously couldn’t help her very much but but then she obviously picked up on our accent and said where are we from in England and we told her and we said we’re from Staffordshire and she went she said oh My dad’s from Staffordshire. We said where? Can she said and that’s obviously our hometown. So another incredible coincidence. So then we had a chat to her dad who’s living over here now. Her parents had moved here in 1957. Yeah. And her dad’s 92 years old now and lives just around the corner here and she had a phone call with him uh while we were there and he was talking about all sorts of places in Can that we know. you’re naming all the all the streets and all the rest of it. So, when we get back home, we’re going to take some pictures and send them to him and uh do a bit of reminiscing. Yeah, that’d be nice, wouldn’t it? But that was so cool. It is a small world. Another reminder of um partly what a small world is, but also how much British heritage there is over here. The amount of British people that came here is astonishing. Yeah. And uh that’s I’m just blown away. Really, their memories persist. Amazing. Yeah. Fantastic. Right, let’s carry on with this looking around. Yay, the power came back on and we’re in the fort. So, show you around here now. Looks quite good. [Music] So, this is the barrel maker shop. It’s the Cooperidge. The Cooperidge for all that trade. That’s him just there. It’s Mr. Cooper. You get five minutes to do it. Yeah. You can Okay, I’ll do this one. You do that one. Ben is now going to make a barrel. Yeah. You may not get 10 out of 10, but No, it just needs a little bit of refinement. And some of them have fallen out the thing at the bottom. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Fort Langley as it would have been in the 1850s. And this whole fort was built in 4 months in about that time, wasn’t it? Yeah, it was. And it’s it was built so that it could be it was for trade, wasn’t it? To really monitor and legislate the trade. It was the main trade hub in the uh west of the Rockies. Yeah. This is the SS Beaver, a steam ship, and it was made in England in 1835, and it sailed over here, and it was the first steam ship working in this part of the world. This is the sort of machines they’d used to crush these packages down. Um, and I think they’re packages. Yeah. Of furs. Oh, all the various furs that they used to trade, which is what the the trade here began with. And with these machines, they crushed them down into as small as they could so they could fit as many as they could into the ship. They traded furs with indig the indigenous people. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. But so complex looks. So this is the border with Russia. There’s Vancouver Island. So we’re in here. Mhm. There’s the border which is now the the actual border. So limit of Russian claim it says there. So Russia had claimed all down there. That’s limit of the Spanish claim. Yeah. And the limit of the US claim upwards and and the British negotiated that they would have control of this from Russia. But Russia would have um what’s now Alaska. Yeah. Lots of things that they trade here, including four candles. Four candles. If you know, you know. Good morning. Hello. We are today at the Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve. The reason we’ve come here is because on Iverlander, the car park just over here is a place you can park overnight. So, we stayed here last night. We drove about an hour um towards the mountains from the garage where we had the work done on the van yesterday, which was Friday, because they didn’t quite finish all the work. So, we’ve got to go back there on Monday morning and we didn’t want to spend the whole weekend on the car park of the garage. So, we drove out this way into these mountains. Sorry, I’m distracted looking at birds flying by. And um yeah, we’ve come to look at this nature reserve and so far it looks beautiful. Yeah, some some nice trails around it. The weather’s holding up. Um we are expecting a bit of rain in a little while, but uh we we’re okay. We’re equipped and we’re not going to be out. We’re not too far from the van at any time really. So, that’s quite useful, isn’t it? It’s the 25th of October today. So, we are um getting towards the um the tail end of the autumn, the fall and uh the bird migrations. We’ve seen well, I would say hundreds of Canada geese flying over in formations this morning. Um we weren’t quick enough to get the camera on them, unfortunately, but we might see them later. Yes, I think we will. Hopefully, we’ll see some later. So, should we crack on and do some of this truck? And we’ll let you know more about the uh the van when when the job’s finished. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Go on then. Okay. Bye. See you in a bit. And this whole area, what’s quite interesting, you see how natural it looks. It really does look like it’s been like this forever. But in fact, between 1942 and 1997, this site was a military training base um as an annex to the Canadian Forces base uh Chiliwac. Chiliwak’s the town that’s just there. And they use this site, the the waterways and stuff to train in building bridges. And there’s a photograph here of this site basically completely raised to the ground. They used to um drag it and dredge the rivers and all sorts to keep it um clear so they could do their training, but now it’s much more like this. And in fact, it’s even more grown up than it is in this picture. So um that’s really cool the way nature reclaims itself really quite quickly. And down we go. This we were up this tower thing. So three flights of stairs. And the reason this is called Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve is because just over here there is a heron nesting site. There are over a hundred nests that the Great Blue Herands use and um March and April. Um so springtime it’s active. So at the moment you can see the nests but you can’t see any herand using them. Um so we’ll just have to come back in March. Let’s have a look see if we can see the nests from here. There they go. Sorry ducks for fright again. Frit the ducks. I’ll get a I’ll get a shot of the nests with this. [Music] These are the cottonwood trees. And these are the trees that the herand like to nest in. Yes. Not sure why they prefer these trees, but they do. Maybe because they don’t move much. Yeah. Cuz they’re so solid. [Music] I suppose it’s the um the branches. If you’re a heron with your ginormous wings, you wouldn’t be able to fly in through really dense trees to your nest. So, I guess these trees have a good balance of nice strong branches to nest on and a good gap between the branches so you can get your ginormous wings in. Good thinking, Batman. Just a thought. Yeah. [Music] [Music] I think you can see the uh the beginnings of the Rocky Mountains just ahead of us here. um snow on the tops there, but also thousands and thousands of these birds, which I think are probably Canada geese, and they’re all tazzing about looking for which way to go off on their migration. I think there’s another big group coming from over there. Yeah. [Music] Wow. Look at this over here, Ben. Over right over there. See them all coming straight over in the sky. Oh god. Yeah, that’s incredible. So, there we are in the van actually having a bit of lunch and what have you and I spot um some sort of hawk up a tree. So Ben jumps jumps down to the ground with his big lens, opens up the window and starts filming out the window this bird that we see. And then a very a chap’s coming along in his truck goes past slightly then reverses and then speaks to Ben and says you are you what what you doing? Are you special forces or something? thought we’re some sort of secret observation thing about special forces monitoring the hawks in Oh dear, that’s so funny. Special forces. But um we thought we’d have another look around. We’ve just they’ve got some fabulous bird feeders just up there and uh we were able to see some marvelous hummingbirds and all sorts of things. So um no doubt Ben will put some pictures up of those. But rather fantastic that you one bird who is absolutely stunning whose name I have no idea. But what I’ll do is I’ll put a photo on the screen now with his name so you can see. Yeah. And and we’re just going to have a quick quick walk around. I don’t The rain isn’t too bad. So uh we’re going to Yeah. We’ll just suck it up cuz we’re brave. We’re British. We’re used to it. That’s what it is. Now we’re going to be getting back on the road towards Langley just outside Vancouver. And tonight we’ll wait there at the car park of the garage and everything will be fixed tomorrow morning. And then we’re back on the road properly heading off towards um Oliver and the wine region. Beautiful parking place. Welcome to this very sunny morning. we have here. Um we’re just leaving the garage the sorry we’re just leaving the garage um having had um the work completed on the van. We’ll tell you more about that later. Um anyway, the good news is it is done and we’re now on the road and we’re going to be uh driving for 4 hours. Everything okay with you, Ben? Excuse me. Yes, absolutely perfect. Thank you. Good. the the uh world is looking beautiful. Turn the camera around and show everybody. I’m going to show you what it looks like. Yes, we are in beautiful sunshine, but heading towards some massive gray clouds. We are. But there you go. That mountain is quite hoa hoa. You banned from saying that. [Music] Well, continuing on now on highway number three. And now we’re up a little bit higher. And we’ve got some very, very beautiful snow on the trees. Isn’t that lovely? It’s actually a snow plow as well. Yeah, it is actually plowing the side of the road. allowing that little bit of whatever slushes up. [Music] fruit growing region. All fruits of all sorts really absolutely everywhere. [Music] Well, that town is called Okanangan Falls. Now, the work we had to have done was um quite a few things really. First thing was that we had a knocking sound from the suspension. When you’re slow, you put your brakes on, you heard a little knock. That was a ball joint underneath. Um also, under the bonnet, there was a um a sort of a chuffing sound, best described as sounding a bit like a steam train. And that was one of the injectors. The seal had failed and so the combustion pressure was blowing up through and out the top of the cylinder head and also bringing with it quite a bit of oil. So the top of the engine was quite oily. Also, we were getting a glow plug warning light on the dashboard. The number two glow plug had failed and it was actually seized into the cylinder head as well. So when they removed it, they had to actually um do an extraction process on that. um it needed the fuel filter changing as well and also one of the retaining clips for the brake pads was um was loose on one of the wheels that was redone as well. So all in all that was just under $5,000 Canadian. Now that is a lot but this garage was really super professional. Their service was absolutely tipped up. It was yeah probably you could call it main dealer service um sort of standards but in an independent garage. So, if you’re in the Vancouver area and you need some work done on a Sprinter van, they really do specialize in sprinters, then they’re a good place to go to. Um, hopefully ours is now good for a lot more miles and won’t need that sort of work doing for a long time. [Music] Welcome to Oliver. So, the Fireh Hall Brewery, the pub which is in the base, the basement really of the old fireh hall here in Oliver. And look at these. These are quite cool. These are the concrete blocks at the side of the car park here. They’re painted like fire engines. Yeah, small pleasures, I suppose. Anyway, this was a Harvest Host and we parked here last night. So, we had a couple of beers and a bite to eat and then just uh walked across to the van and spent a very comfortable night. And this is the front of the the old fireh hall here. So the upstairs is a beastro and downstairs is the pub. And what’s really funny about people’s different perspective of time and everything. Um the the woman in the pub last night, she said that it closed as a fireh hall a long long time ago, like years and years and years ago. And in my mind, that’s like in the 1950s or something. It was 2008. it stopped being a fire hole. And uh yeah, which to me is like last week. And this morning we’re just going to have a quick look around the little town of Oliver. Uh which is where this brewery is. So um and Oliver obviously great name. Um I say that because I had one son and I named him Oliver. And there we go. So we’re going to have a little look around here. See what we can find. It was -2° C last night. So, we had ice on the inside of the windows in the van last night. This morning when we woke up, so it’s definitely winter is definitely approaching. Yeah, it’s not quite so cold this morning, but it is still quite quite cold. But there is snow on the hill over there and well, well, not wine. We’re right in the Okanangan Valley wine region. Oliver is the is Canada’s capital of wine. Yeah. So, we’re going to be visiting some wineries later and sampling some, I think. Yeah, it’s this is a beautiful region. Um, do you know one thing that I commented on as we drove in that I find astonishing? We’ve driven how many must be 18 maybe even 20,000 miles in Canada. And as we drove into this area, we were saying, “Isn’t this incredible? We’ve driven so far, covered so much of Canada, and here’s a place that’s completely different. Totally different topography, totally different look to the place, and it’s just a country that keeps giving. It’s utterly astonishing that you can spend so much time in a place and still be surprised by what it’s delivering. What a fantastic place. This is John Oliver who was premier of British Columbia from 1917 to 1927 and he developed an irrigation project which brought agriculture to this whole valley and kind of kickstarted all of this uh wineries and everything that we see here today. What a guy. Top Oliver. Pardon? He’s a top Oliver. He’s a He is a top Oliver. Well done the boss. Well done, Mr. Oliver. Well, we’re just walking around Oliver and look at this. This is absolutely stunning. It’s Now, I don’t know whether this is an Airstream camper that was built, you know, years ago or if somebody’s converted an Airstream caravan into a camper. But what an incredible vehicle. It’s a um kitchen that you know um food um van now. So it’s not an actual camper anymore. But that is just stunning. That sort of thing to re revise something like this, bring it up to up to modernday spec would be such a fantastic project. I just love that vehicle. The riveted aluminium. It’s like an aircraft or something. What a beautiful vehicle and it’s now the Vagabond kitchen. This is called District Wine Village. We think it might be pretty much shut, but uh I’m going to have a little round. It’s closed today and tomorrow. Oh god. That’s their um their weekend. Ah, so sadly we’re not going to be back. Oh, we’re on the road up to Pentictton and the bench, the naromata bench and over here. So, here is uh I think it’s called Karaha Lake and the town of Pentictton in the distance there. Let’s zoom in a bit. You can see it’s a little airirst strip and in the distance the other side of the town is another lake and on the right hand edge of it is the naromata bench. Now the naromata bench is a sort of geological feature where the land is flat on the side of the mountain there and because of the direction it faces which is west um it gets really good weather and sunshine and that’s where all the top vineyards are. One over here that’s a very smart one isn’t it? Look at that white note and another smart one. Literally one after the other. Um, and why not? And why not see that little joke there, Ben? See what I did? We’re at the Marine Winery and their tasting room’s open. So, we’re going to have a look. And this winery was especially recommended by Michelle, who we met in Fort Langley. So, thanks for the recommendation, Michelle. Let’s go and see what the wine’s like. It is stunning, isn’t it? Great out, isn’t it? Look at that. Oh god. And the tasting room looks a bit smart. Six wines, I think. So, this is our Sabin PL. So, you’re going to get some beautiful aromatics on this. So, once I give this glass a really, I’ll pour into the glass. We’re going to give it a really good swirl to open up some beautiful tropical aromatics. So, you’re going to get some guava peach aromas. Lovely peach flavor up front with a nice dry finish on the back end. Oh, it smells good. Does not smell. Yeah, it rounded. It’s nice. It is a little too sweet for me. Yeah, for me. Yeah. Which one’s that? I’m going to try. This is the cliffhanger. It’s very nice. Easy to drink though, isn’t it? It really is. [Music] Lake Okanagan just here. This actually regulates the temperature of the vineyards in this area. So without the lake there, all the vines would freeze in the winter and roast in the summer. So um yeah, it’s fantastic. And the glacial um history of this region means that the soils are really um nice and consistent, not rocky, and so it enables them to grow excellent vines and make fabulous wine. I’ve got some more to taste inside. Yeah. Well, we ended up spending some money on wine and a bottle of port. A little bit more than we were planning to. Yes. But it is absolutely delicious. It was very good at upselling. Yeah. Was our lad. So, if anybody is in this area, we can highly recommend Marine. Was lovely. Great experience. Very, very beautiful. This is a place you could really spend some time. You could have a whole a whole trip dedicated to to touring this region. Lovely. Oh, got to get back. I think that that port would rival the Dura Valley port. Anything from the Duro, do you think they wouldn’t? Perhaps not. They’re not supposed to call it port, are they? Cuz it’s Ah, did he call it? Does it say port on bottle? Whoa. because of the Appalachian. Oh, okay. We’ll have to look into that. I think they may be being a bit naughty. Halloween is taken very, very seriously here. And uh just to give you an example of that, we’ve got this marvelous, marvelous display. Well, hello. Good morning and welcome to the utterly beautiful Okanagan Valley and the Naramata bench. The sun’s shining on us. It’s just wonderful. We bought some wine yesterday from this region. Um we we’ve only tasted some in the uh in the winery so far, but it was delicious. So, we look forward to that. And that’s because this is Canada’s wine capital. Yes. The town of Oliver, which is just down the road there from Pentictton, where we are now, is Canada’s wine capital. But you might detect our voice is a little bit flat this morning. This is a very sad day. Sad. Very sad indeed. We’ll tell you all about it when we get back in the van, but uh it’s a sad day. Sad. [Music] Well, we’re getting towards the southern end of the Okanagan Valley and it continues to be one after another vineyard and also fruit growing. such a fertile soil they’ve got down here. And um of Soyos, which is the city that we’re coming up to just around the corner, is regularly they get temperatures of 40° centigrade in the summer. In the summer. Um it’s 12° right now. But um yeah, so that makes it Canada’s hottest city pretty much every year. So they get great weather for growing the grapes. [Music] Oh, why then is it such a sad day today? Because this is the last moment that we will be in Canada. Yeah. as we’re leaving the drive down from Pentictton to Oso to the border with the United States. Yes. After an epic um 27,000 km in Canada. Not to be sniffed at, is it? Certainly not in just over 6 months or something like that. Yeah. Brilliant. And we’re about halfway through this trip, so the first major leg is drawing to a close. It is. Are we going to be very sad to be leaving Canada? We We are because it has been absolutely incredible. We’ve seen some amazing stuff. Uh we’ve the wildlife, the scenery. Uh just and the people. Yeah. And the people, you have to say, Canadian people are just wonderful. Everyone we’ve met. It’s not just a myth. No, it is really a fabulous place in every possible respect. Yeah, but I think there are lots more adventures ahead of us. So, we’re now Please stay with us. Yeah, we’re now south. Yeah. So, it would be great if you can join us on the rest of the journey. We will see you now. We’re going to turn the camera off in a minute and head down when we get towards the border. So, I think we’re going to call it a day on this week’s video, aren’t we? I think so. I think it’s a good place to end the video. Yeah. Um, yeah. It’ll give us chance to mop our tears and That’s right. and and what have you, but uh it’s just Yeah. Yeah. So, assuming we get through this border, which I’m sure is no problem at all, but um we will see you on the other side in next week’s video. We will. So, don’t forget to smash that like button and comment and subscribe if you’re not already, please. Yeah, all that stuff. We love hearing from you. Yeah, we do. And we’ll see you next week over the other side. Bye. Bye. [Music]

🌍 It’s been a long time coming but this is a very sad day. After spending over 6 months crossing Canada, our time here has come to an end.

👉🏻 We have been travelling across Canada for over six months now, after shipping our van over from the UK. See our whole trip so far on our channel.; http://bit.ly/46lDHfd
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We’re Sarah and Ben, a couple from the UK who’ve been on the road for years. Back in 2020, when the world went bonkers, we decided to take matters into our own hands. We bought an empty Mercedes Sprinter van and started transforming it into our dream home on wheels. And guess what? We’ve been on an incredible adventure, exploring every corner of Europe! From the sunny southern tip of Portugal to the eastern shores of Bulgaria, and even the icy northernmost tip of Norway, over 300 miles into the Arctic. It’s been an unforgettable journey, and we wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world!

To explore even more of this fabulous world, we have shipped our van over to Canada and we are embarking on an epic adventure around North America.

Follow us as we explore the World and check back at our videos to see our van build and all our other travels in Europe.

Visit our website at https://www.sarahandben.uk
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00:00 Intro
00:25 Fort Langley
07:15 Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve
14:22 Driving to the Okanagan
18:20 Oliver
22:50 Naramata Bench
27:05 Sad day
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We use Epidemic Sound for the music in our videos;
Always remembered https://www.epidemicsound.com/music/tracks/7288abff-73ac-4eff-8b84-619539d6f0c1/
Western call https://www.epidemicsound.com/music/tracks/401359e4-dd9e-3d14-9fe5-c3629f2699d6/
The ethereal https://www.epidemicsound.com/music/tracks/28d12f8e-06df-4048-901d-1ae67f188f47/
This and that https://www.epidemicsound.com/music/tracks/51bca44e-26a7-3991-aacc-931438a42530/
Forever, forever ago https://www.epidemicsound.com/music/tracks/d691d5b4-9219-4ce3-a08c-cc5346ba3d51/
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Our camera gear (Affiliate links) – may only work for the UK Amazon store;
Sony A7 iv https://amzn.to/3ZrmKLd
Sigma 24-70 f2.8 https://amzn.to/40qdjgg
Sigma 14-24 f2.8 https://amzn.to/3pvg5DF
Sony 200-600 https://amzn.to/3lQt1Cd
Insta 360 X4 https://amzn.to/3RPjyaD
DJI mic https://amzn.to/40gRGPn
Drone DJI Mavic 2 pro. Not available any more as it’s 6 years old. I would get this one now as it’s very good and under 250 grammes so you don’t need a license to fly it. https://amzn.to/4nZhn2o
Tripod https://amzn.to/40EvbU8
Osmo Pocket 3 https://amzn.to/45mmIsJ

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