Canada leg, through BC and Alberta

I did a round-the-world, bicycle-camping trip through several countries and kept a journal along the way.

I arrived in Fernie at the Raging Elk hostel and immediately regretted the decision not to camp. The building reminded me of a 1970s Soviet tower block; it had clearly been designed to cram as many snowboarders as possible into its drab bowels, on the assumption that they'd be too tired, drunk or busy taking their clothes off to care about the Feng Shui.

One major plus was the provision of a free pancake breakfast the next morning, at which I decided to consume the equivalent of breakfast, lunch and dinner in one sitting. The only problem is that pancake batter takes forever to digest, so for the first few hours on the bike I felt an insistent tugging in my mid-section, like a kid carrying snowballs in the upturned hem of his sweater.

With half a day to explore Fernie, I decided to hike to a local waterfall. I didn't have any bear bells (which, along with a pair of shoes and a hat, were said to have been found in the stomach of a locally notorious killer bear), but instead brought along a whistle, which I blew on intermittently. I decided a burst every twenty seconds should let mummy bear and her cubs know I was coming.
The trailhead was clearly marked with warning signs:

"DO make noise while you hike."

"DO leave immediately if you see bear tracks or droppings." (No kidding � but which way should I go?!)

"DO NOT hike alone if you can avoid it."

I'd been walking less than ten minutes when I heard leaves moving and branches breaking in a large bush 10 metres away. I looked up � and saw a black bear running alongside a barbed wire fence making a loud guttural coughing noise, then come to a stop about 50 metres from me.
At first I thought the bear was on the other side of the fence and, emboldened, reached for my camera. But closer inspection revealed the bear was on MY side of the fence - and now it was reared on its hind legs and looking straight at me.

As my legs started to sway like an MFI wardrobe, a cub tumbled out of the bush and scurried off to join its mum, then both mother and baby disappeared into the forest.

I stood there rooted to the spot. The sign hadn't said anything about human droppings, but as a precaution, I felt I should leave the scene as quickly as possible.

But wait a second, I thought - wasn't it the bears who had absconded? Weren't they more scared of me than I was of them? I decided to continue the hike - but to shorten the gap between whistle blows from twenty seconds to about two.

Just then two female hikers in their fifties appeared from around the corner, and by the time we met on the trail, I'd recovered some of my earlier sang froid.
I told them I'd just seen a bear and they both looked interested - in the polite and neutral way you do with strangers - until one of them asked where I'd seen it�and I pointed to the bush about thirty feet away.

"Really! When?"

"About a minute ago."

Now they were looking fully alert and just a little nervous which made me, newly minted naturalist and bear vanquisher, even more relaxed.

"You'll be fine", I said with baseless assurance.
"Do you have bear bells with you?"

"No - we left them at home", replied one with a sideways look at her friend.
They continued on their way, keeping up a steady stream of bear-alerting conversation, while I headed off blowing my whistle like it was a didgeridoo.
No more bear sightings...please.

An animal I've seen much more frequently is the cow. I turn my head to look at them as I cycle past - and invariably the herd is already gazing at me, tracking my progress with those watery orbs. It's almost unnerving, being watched by sixty pairs of eyes in complete silence. Curious beasts. Perhaps that's the origin of the phrase "nosy cow"?

From Fernie I cut through the Rockies via Crowsnest Pass, and ended up in the middle of the southern Alberta Prairies. It started to get dark fast and I was tiring quickly, so I pulled into a remote gas station to ask the owner if I could camp on his land.
As I got closer I noticed that all the lights were off, but when I peered inside I could make out the silhouette of a figure behind the counter. I went inside and saw a man in the semi-darkness, reclined in what looked like a barber's chair with his hands clasped behind his head, watching me.
As I walked towards him he moved not a muscle, not even an eyelid. I decided he wasn't a black belt in customer service, but fortified by the fact that I hadn't interrupted him cleaning his shot-gun, I asked if he knew anywhere I could put up a tent, hint, hint.
He remained as motionless as a sniper.

"Campground across the river."

Rather than remind him of the requirement for a verb in order to form a complete sentence, I decided to thank him for his time and follow his advice.

The next stop was Okotoks, just outside Calgary. I liked the name, because it reminded me of an Eskimo song we learned in music class at infant school, called Ocky Tocky Unga.
The local Lions Club provided the camping and in keeping with my deteriorating dietary habits, Tim Hortons the cuisine. When I started the tour I was buying broccoli, bananas and leafy salad, but lately it�s been danishes, cookies, kit-kats, twixes and blizzards. I hope my pancreas can take the pace.

After a pit stop for a new back tire I headed off to Drumheller, an area of arid Badlands about 140 km North East of Calgary. The standout landscape features in Drumheller are the Hoodoos, priapic (i.e. penis shaped - thank you Word of the Day) slabs of sandstone and shale which attain their unusual shape through wind erosion. In addition to its geology, Drumheller is archaeologically fertile, with an impressive museum of reconstructed dinosaur skeletons.

The outbound journey was made more difficult by an Easterly wind, which reverted to a more orthodox prevailing Westerly wind on the way back. The net result of this was that as I pulled in to a camp-site in Irricana, I was absolutely done in. The manager of the campsite asked me how far I'd come and I replied, thick-tongued, "128km".

He looked unimpressed.

"Had a couple of girls one time who cycled here from Banff - 204 km. In one day. Now boy, they were fit!"

Inexplicably, I wanted to kill him.

So here I am in Calgary at the end of the road, at least for now. Biking solo has been a fantastic experience. If nothing else it's confirmed that most, if not all, of my problems are caused by other people - and that becoming a traveling hermit is a viable career option. I can't believe there's a whole year of this to come. I can hardly wait.

See you down the road,

Jon