Our first day North of the border after leaving the USA, and it started with a steep climb up a mountain in the rain, wading through an icy glacial creek, a stay in a remote forest cabin and meeting a moose – Welcome to Canada. Despite this classically Canadian welcome to the country, we did have to keep reminding ourselves that we were no longer in the USA, as the landscapes and people were, at first at least, all very similar to Northern Montana. But as we got closer to Fernie, we couldn’t help but notice the road signs were now back to being metric (saving us from hours of mental arithmetic every time we read a road sign) and people were riding bikes and walking – actually using their legs!

We spent a couple of nights in Fernie (thanks to some amazing WarmShowers hosts, Bruce and Jen) and for us this was crunch time. For the last couple of weeks we had been mulling over various decisions about our remaining time in the Americas. We had just under two months until our flight out of Vancouver to Japan, which would mark the end of our time in the Americas and the start of our time in Asia, but what to do with that couple of months? Our initial plan was to aim for Alaska (but Ted being Ted doesn’t believe in plans – and yes he was a real life Project Manager for a few years – Apparently, if you don’t have a plan, nothing can go wrong!) but within our two month timeframe, to get there and back again, we would have to get our heads down, pedal like crazy and take the most direct route (on the highway) – and all for what? To tick a box to say we had reached the border? To be able to boost the ego by saying we cycled from Ushuaia to Alaska, when in truth we had already flown over Central America? To cycle head-on into the thick smoke filled air of the horrific wildfires that were destroying Jasper, into the land of mosquitoes and horseflies (when they really do drive Ted crazy), to meet the incoming autumn cold as it descends from the North? We tried to work out a way of getting back from Alaska if we were to only cycle one way, but the options of public transport are few and far between here and always seemed to end up being super expensive or overly complicated when we added the bikes into the mix. The fastest, cheapest, most direct option would have been to fly (crazy!), but we didn’t want to add any unnecessary flights into this trip and increase our carbon footprint.

So for us, it was a choice between either head-down on the Alaska Highway, or head West towards Vancouver. And Fernie was the decision point. As you can imagine, it was a tricky decision. Much tea was required. There was a lot of too-ing and fro-ing, but in the end, this trip for us has never been about cycling fast with heads down on a highway in order to tick a box, or to do something because ‘it sounds good’ by someone else’s standards, so West towards Vancouver it was.

West. After all this time. Since our very first day in Ushuaia at the southern tip of Tierra Del Fuego in Argentina nine months ago, across all the kilometres we’ve covered, up and down all the hills, through each country and every state, with all our decisions we’ve made until now our North Star has always been ‘just keep heading North’, so to have decided to swing a left and head West, felt unsettling. Even more unsettling was the fact that in order to join the Trans Canada Trail and BC Epic Routes that would take us all the way to Vancouver, we actually had to spend our first day out of Fernie heading South, before then swinging West. South? After all these months of heading North. It felt like we were meandering about in circles, well almost circles.

As the days passed by on the Trans Canada Trail, the old railway line route shared it’s historical charm with us through the tourist information boards, showing faded, monochrome pictures and newspaper clippings of proud men in Victorian dress. The railway was quite the feet of engineering, and we marvelled at how much work it must have taken to build – Perfect gradients of less than 3%, up and down mountainsides, requiring huge embankments of boulders, wooden bridges spanning deep bottomless gorges and dark lengthy tunnels blast into the rock – only for the running of the trains to be hampered by adverse weather and deep snow, meaning the whole thing was decommissioned only a few years after it was finished, with so many lives lost in the process. The old railtrail cut through the deep forests of dark evergreen in straight lines or wide arching bends that meant we could always see what was around the corner, or laid out in front of us, but despite this, our decision to move away from our North Star had somehow left us feeling quite lost. It was like our purpose and drive had suddenly vanished.

In honesty, we weren’t really appreciating the views across the mountainsides, or over the pristine lakes, or the cloud inversions, or the immaculate camp spots we stumbled upon. The stable rail trail gradients also removed all variation in riding and the monotony started to get to us. It was like the August afternoon storms and low lying mist were metaphorically with us all day long, obscuring our perspective of the trail, and of our trip.

We continued covering the miles but somewhere along the way we had lost our mojo. I became filled with a deep sense of tiredness, an exhaustion that felt like it reached my bones. An exhaustion that even a day of rest didn’t seem to touch. And Ted felt direction-less, apathetic, like we were visiting all these places and engaging in all these experiences with no real enthusiasm or appreciation. But we continued.

After almost three weeks of riding, of rattling along ever deteriorating railtrail surfaces, and of various detours to avoid washed out landslides (some a lot more successful than others, some requiring us to backtrack to where we had started that day and some requiring hours on busy, boring highway) we found ourselves on the home straight to Vancouver. The final day, a 140km stretch of flat riding that criss-crossed highways and wound it’s way through urban sprawl, was tackled on a day of non-stop torrential rain, where the spray coming off the road surface matched the water pouring on us from the black sky above. Safe to say, that when we finally arrived at our destination on the outskirts of Vancouver, we were thoroughly drenched. I mean, soaking wet, pour the water out of your boots and wring out your underwear whilst looking like a drowned rat wet. We had arranged to stay with my brother’s friend, David, in Vancouver and he kindly welcomed us in despite the disheveled state within which we appeared at his doorstep. David is a mountain biker, so is familiar with mud splattered biking gear, but we still couldn’t help but feel guilty trailing our dripping pannier bags through his pristine apartment, our soggy socks leaving a trail of footprints across his pale cream carpet. David was generous enough to let us stay a few nights with him, which turned into a few more.

I slept a lot, rested a lot, read a lot and stretched a little. The tiredness in my bones gradually receding with each day spent in the luxurious, homely comfort of a roof over our heads, a bathroom with a warm shower and a kitchen – a whole kitchen! And Ted busied himself with both necessary bike repairs and unnecessary fettling with gear, unpacking and emptying all his bags, re-thinking how things are carried on the bikes – now a customary ritual for many of our rest stops – in a way that he finds equally relaxing and frustrating. After a few days of ignoring the fact that we would soon have to be moving on again, we finally started thinking about what to do next. Neither of us could truly shake the disconnected, listless feeling that had been growing since we swung a left in Fernie, so we decided to do what you should always do when you’re tired, when you’ve lost your mojo, when things no longer feel quite right – we decided to take a holiday. We decided that some time travelling slowly, with more time off the bikes and more time for other things was what we needed. We needed to do what you do on a summer holiday – to make the most of the final warmth of the sun before autumn arrives, to swim in the sea, to enjoy campfires, to stay under the roof of a cabin for a night or two, to do yoga outside, to stop in coffee shops and linger longer than is really acceptable. And so we did. We head off to the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, with Vancouver Island our holiday destination of choice.

We jumped on the Sky-Train across Vancouver, we joined the convoy of rental bikes wobbling their way along the Vancouver waterfront under cloudless skies, we pedalled the Lions Gate Bridge marvelling at the views and we stopped for a picnic lunch in the park. As I sat among the driftwood of the West Vancouver waterfront, admiring my smart new boots and the sole that was no longer peeling off my feet (as had been the case with my old boots) I thought ‘Hey, I put some new shoes on And suddenly everything’s right’ – and I knew that this was exactly the feeling Paulo Nutini had been trying to capture in those catchy song lyrics of our University years.

Our days along the Sunshine Coast continued in this way. Warm sunny days, spent taking our time, catching ferries from one inlet to the next, watching the humpback whales from the deck of the boat and covering a few kilometres each day until Vancouver Island was in sight.

I love being by the sea. Having grown up by the Yorkshire Coast, it feels like the damp salty air of the sea is somehow woven into my DNA and being by the sea always makes me feel at home, even when it’s not the North Sea I’m looking out over. So to stand on the deck of the ferry and look out over the Straight of Georgia as we approached Vancouver Island, it strangely felt like home.

Vancouver Island is much bigger than we (or most other people) really realise. In square kilometres it’s not too dissimilar to the size of Belgium, and it’s roughly 450km long from end to end. We decided to use the popular ‘Trees to the Seas’ bikepacking route as our guide, but hash it about in our own holiday style – adding on a four day visit to Quadra Island (an island off Vancouver Island), cutting out some unnecessary steep logging road hills (steep hills never create holiday vibes!), taking note of various different alternatives so we could just roll with whatever the weather was doing. The route truly did take us from the trees to the seas, or in our case, from the seas to the trees, as we were (of course!) following it in the opposite direction. The seas were that perfect, bright, reflective blue, deep, calm and crystal clear.  An afternoon spent in a canoe, under  warm blue skies off the coast of Quadra, was accompanied by a couple of humpback whales breaching out of the water in the distance, the swooshing and thundering noise carrying across the water before we saw the white grey flash of their undersides leap out of the offing.  The same swoosh and thunder became the soundtrack to my swim in the pebbled cove of Rebecca Spit the following day, the thought that I was sharing the same water as the whales in the distance created a jumbled sense of excitement, nervousness and deep humility at being part of their world. The gentle giants love the herring and salmon filled waters around Vancouver Island at this time of year, and they, along with Orca, Sea Lions, Porpoise, Sea Otter (and many other creatures and sea birds) use them as their summer feeding grounds. As we were in holiday mode, we even jumped on a boat tour from the twee tourist village of Telegraph Cove in order to see all this amazing sea-life up close. Memories of my childhood love of the 1993 movie Free Willy, and subsequent Free Willy themed birthday party, rising as we watched the Orca alongside the boat, captivated by their graceful movement, synchronized breathing and obvious intelligence. It was pretty special.

Our love of the sea soon became equal to our love, and time, spent among the trees of Vancouver Island. Every time we found ourselves in the deep, dark, dense undergrowth of the forests we were reminded of the multiple layers of life supported by just one patch of this temperate rainforest. The huge towering Redcedar, Douglas Fir and Spruce creating a tangled canopy above the sheltered, cooler climes enjoyed by those living underneath. The carpets of moss clinging to the broad trunks and hanging delicately from branches, made us feel enveloped in a cosy blanket of green. The beams of light breaking through the canopy above would shine light on one branch, one fern, one leaf at a time, like spotlights on a stage, focusing our attention on the smaller players of this green world. Tangled knots of roots and fallen, crumbling boughs formed the forest floor where secondary mini-forests of mosses and lichen grew, creating the feeling that we could forever keep zooming in to layer-upon-layer of forest, one layer being a slightly smaller version of the one before, like Russian Dolls of green worlds, one stacked inside another. We made a point of taking the time to appreciate these incredible worlds.

As we relaxed, allowing ourselves to fall further and further into island-time, our mornings became notably slower – a second coffee here, a morning swim there. Not wanting to let go of the feeling of endless summer. The feeling we had held onto since first flipping the seasons on their head and flying from a European Autumn to a South American Spring, all those months ago in the ‘warm up’ at the beginning of our trip. The days on Vancouver Island continued to be full of sunshiney pootling along winding gravel roads, stopping whenever we passed a Recreational Site or coffee shop we liked the look of. But gradually, bit by bit, the slowing of our own momentum became reflective of the slow swan song of summer. The turning of the seasons was upon us, the first signs creeping in – Waking to the morning alarm now ringing before the first light as the days shorten; watching the morning dew trickle down the sides of the tent; noticing our breathe in the chilly air of daybreak; the ever increasing need to warm our hands around our mugs of steaming coffee before finding the dexterity to tackle the day. Nature’s grand finale to the season of plenty was soon all around us, from the tangle of bramble thorns heavy with berries, to the colourful, characterful mushrooms bursting from the undergrowth. We saw it in the ever widening waistline of the bears we spotted and in the struggle of the salmon, swimming upstream with all their might, in their last desperate attempt to reach the spawning ground safety of inland lakes before winter arrives. 

Sure enough, as our time on the Island progressed, so too did the mist, slowly taking longer to rise, each day bringing with it weightier water droplets and finally maturing into rain. In true West-Coast holiday fashion, we became accustomed to waiting out the rain from the comfort of a coffee shop, watching the torrents create overflowing gutters and turning roads into rivers, reminiscent of many of our Scottish holidays over the years. Thankfully for us, Vancouver Island locals are the friendliest bunch, and saved us from several soggy nights in the tent. From bumping into some local cyclists on a ferry and being offered a warm bed for the night; to asking locals at the cafe table next to us a question about water taxi times and it leading to a weekend spent staying in their RV including a visit to their cabin; from chatting to a local stranded due to a car breakdown and it leading to sharing the costs of a motel room for the night; to buying some honey from a driveway stall and it leading to a couple of nights stay in a cabin and insightful evenings spent absorbing as much knowledge as we could about forestry and bees – We were, once again, overwhelmed by the generosity and kindness extended to us. Always arriving in such situations as strangers and leaving as friends.

But the day after the Harvest Moon had awoken us in the tent with a light so bright we thought it was the sun, we couldn’t avoid the inevitable any longer – Autumn arrived.

A morning chill so stark that we needed to wear our down jackets whilst riding, and the heat of the sun on our backs did nothing to take the edge out of the cold air. The seasons had shifted, and it marked the reality that, reluctantly, so too must we. We set a course back towards Vancouver. It marked the end of our holiday of island-time. A switch in the seasons and a change in our focus. A move away from the memories of an incredible and challenging first year on the bikes, towards looking forward to our next year. To embracing our new found nervousness about landing in Japan in a few days time, a tumbling mix of fear and excitement taking over that is as great now as it was the day we left the UK. So we turn the page into our next chapter, our second year on the bikes, where our North Star will now always be to move West, with the sun setting in front of us, drawing us home.