Desire is the starting point of all achievement

The weekend before last Linda decided that things had been far too serious and heavy since we returned from our summer vacation and that my head was starting to go 'down'. She was right of course, it's a girl thing.., and her intuition had picked up on the fact that demands were taking over, frustrations mounting, challenges challenging, and that a breath of fresh air was needed. So on returning home from working in the South on the Friday I was 'told' not to bother unpacking my bag, just to refresh the essential contents, grab my camera bag, because we were going for a short break. Just the two of us...

Linda had booked a hotel in the pretty village of Coniston just for the Saturday night and no sooner had we done the weekly chores, been horse riding with Katie and then dropped off the girls at their Mum's house, than we were heading north up the M6. I do like heading north, it somehow always manages to lift my spirits when I see the hills and then turn off at junction 36.

We had dinner and drinkies in the hotel (which was a little bit, well actually, a lot like something from out of Royston Vasey (you'll either understand that reference or you won't, sorry), but hey... it was last minute and all!) whilst we decided what to do the following morning.
So these two shots above are from the beautiful morning that greeted us on Sunday, right behind the hotel on Coniston. So peaceful and so relaxing...

Now, ever since Linda and I met she's told me about a boat in the Lake District that she would "so LOVE to go and see and take a trip on it!"

The Steam Yacht Gondola.

Originally built and used as a passenger 'train' in the 1850's it was scuppered and lay derelict for many many years in the depths of Coniston Water. Until that is in the early 1970's when The National Trust decided that Gondola should be saved for the benefit of the nation. She was faithfully rescued, repaired and fully restored and then in aroud 1980, she was re-born.

Linda remembers seeing the news stories of the boats' plight on TV and in the local news at the time but had never realised her desire to actually go and see it. Well it was far too good an opportunity to miss out on so we did the decent thing and made this little girl's wish come true.

It was quite a nostalgic journey. To sit there and think that the Victorians had ridden along on this very same vessel, all turned out in their bowler hats, bonnets and petticoats was truly thought provoking and the grace of the boat was really surprising and uplifting. I expected a rough ride with smoke, steam, chugging and chuffing. Nothing like it! The ride was unbelievably quiet and so smooth, it was such a joy. What a genuinely stunning piece of our national history and so unexpected that we'd get to enjoy in on that day.

After the sailing we headed east and further north to Muncaster Castle on the River Esk. Home to the Pennington family for over 800 years and also home to the World Owl Centre. So now it was my turn for realising ambitions...

One day I hope to take 'that' picture... the 'one' that everybody recognises, admires, copies, talks about... one day! This Robin though, would be the one and only true wildlife shot of the day.

I love the thought that one day I could have a piece of my work published for other people to share and enjoy. A piece of music that I've written, some words that I've penned, a theory that my industry recognises or a photograph that makes people go 'wow!'. I think it's so good to have those desires... it keeps the spirit alive and keeps one aiming at something. It has to be just like the feeling one gets when somebody genuinely appreciates a gift from us, or getting clean plates from a meal that we've worked hard to prepare. Only this evening I've been chatting to Sarah, so ebullient about which university she would like to attend and how she is going to share a flat with her friend Jenny. They've agreed between themselves today that they need to save up so much each month so that they have a backup fund and that they'll go and research certain towns during the next year or so and that they'll both have to work really hard for their A-levels to get there.... You see.. Ambitions and desires are so healthy!

As much as I hope to take that one shot in the wild I realise that first of all I need to learn how to do so. An ideal opportunity for me to do some of that learning was the Birds Of Prey demonstration at Muncaster by the World Owl Trust; the world’s premier owl conservation organisation which promotes scientific research, habitat creation and restoration, a UK national nest-box scheme, together with breeding programmes for these wonderful creatures.

The day was really enjoyable, the birds are very regal and beautiful and the house and gardens very interesting with audio commentary, narrated by Patrick Gordon-Duff-Pennington, the present owner, describing what can be seen (and felt!) in the Great Hall, the Library, the Dining Room, the Drawing Room and the Bedrooms.

This is Rollo, a European Eagle Owl. The Common Buzzard earlier is Mortimer.

I learned a great lesson one this day... even in captivity and under controlled conditions, one has to have the patience of a saint to photograph living creatures. Photographing wildlife is something for which you need patience, steady breathing, perseverance.... I took around 200 shots during the afternoon, you are looking at the only ones that I think are worth sharing!

This is Sparky, a rescued Barn owl. It was such a privilege to hold this bird. He was so trusting and unassuming of these two lunatics that were SO overwhelmed by his presence.


This time next year Rodney... this time next year...

She IS the Fire Starter!

Linda that is!

Seriously! She was/IS like a woman obsessed when there's an opportunity for some pyromania!! Global warming!? Carbon foorprints!? Phah!! She couldn't be happier than when she is in posession of some kindling, a nice chunk of flint, a hard sharp object to strike it against, some small animal fur, an entire days worth of print from a small town in Belgium, a gallon or two of kerosene, a ray of sunlight and a magnifying glass (preferably one from the top floor of a Scottish lighthouse), two sticks and a box of Swan Vestas. When it comes to fire, Linda is stark raving mad!! Nothing was safe, if it wasn't fastened down and it wasn't wet, the safety curtain was drawn back and it got thrown onto the hearth like a sacraficial animal while she danced around the cabin flailing her arms, well her left one at least, and chanting like an over-enthusiastic guest at a Hawaiian fire circle beach party.

During our trip to Jasper National Park we stayed in a fantastic log cabin, surrounded by pine trees, watched over by Whistlers Mountain and overlooking the Athabasca River beyond the short lawn. http://www.alpinevillagejasper.com

This was our cabin for the week, what a glorious setting it is and inside and out one couldn't help but feel relaxed and perhaps inspired to go and live in the great outdoors. Birds, trees, water, mountains, snow, blue sky, white fluffy clouds, small animals, large animals, more trees were just a few of the things we could see out of the windows and from the porch. It was completely gorgeous and romantic and best of all for Linda, it was beautifully cosy inside and it had a log fire!

Take a good long hard look at Linda's face, we should have done that too because for the rest of our stay all we saw was her backside as she stoked and poked until the wee small hours, EVERY night. She must have burned her/our way through a small hillside of trees, more firelighters than you could shake a bottle of highly flammable lighter fluid and a box, no three boxes of matches at, and in my opinion she is more than likely singularly responsible for a whole new layer of ozone disappearing forever. Was she happy!? Oh yes! Like Elvis with a cheeseburger!

The cabin is in a lovely setting, this is the view from the front porch, the Athabasca turning a sharp sweeping corner just outside. We regularly saw rafts of screaming people going by...

Katie, bless her, as much as she tried, never actually got to strike a single match, or place a single stick on the fire. She did help Linda to gather sticks, and pine cones, oh my Lord, the pine cones!.... but her only real compensation for all that hard graft was that she did get to cook our dinner one night, outside! Linda of course lit the fire on the barbeque, and lit it again, then scrunched up and stuffed more paper into it, added more charcoal, more paper, wood, and then finally after about 2 hours she fired a jet of lighting fluid over some more scrunched up paper, and opened up the gates of Hades, well.. the grill of the BBQ and threw it on! Success!

The meal was fabulous. We made bacon and cheese minced steak burgers and sat out on the porch enjoying them... and some wine.... eventually. You can see by the jackets that it was getting late.

Damn good job though! If you ever need a BBQ chef, Katie is your girl and I can highly recommend her abilities. Junior Master Chef, Alberta style :-)

Sarah meanwhile had a nervous breakdown from the near starvation and the trauma of watching, listening to Linda usurp the laws of physics and chemistry in her attempts to set alight the park, and during which time she put her nose just a little too far into her Little Booky Wook (she was reading Russel Brands autobiography at this time...)


The surrounding scenery is amazing and it's hard to believe the colour of the water at first. More about that later on... We regularly walked up from the site to Jasper town centre which was up through enchanting woodland pathways and over rivers between the trees. This view is from the back of the Tekarra Restaurant which was the nearest to us, about a 20 minute stroll along the Athabasca River.

What a special place! On the expensive side perhaps but such a wonderful setting. A really rustic dining room settled in amongst the pines. Traditional service, fabulous cocktails, frequented apparently by many celebrities including Marilyn Monroe and more recently John Travolta. No wonder, the food is amazing. All their dishes are created from fresh ingredients by world renowned chef David George Husereau. I had Bison. Well.... Why not!? The wildlife around the Apline Village is plentiful and one night, we had such a treat...

"Wow!! Look at that!!" Linda cried out and for a change she wasn't holding a match. Just outside our bedroom window was this Elk gently grazing on the lawn. We crept out (just like that cat in the crypt) onto the front porch and saw that there was more... Many more! We were lucky enough to be able to walk over to the river bank wihout getting too near to the herd or disturbing them and I still can't believe that we stayed for over an hour watching these fabulous beasts grazing, drinking, and the younger ones frollicking around in in the water.

You can't tell from these pictures but it was actually quite dark being around 22:00.

The Elk were eventually chased away by the staff of Alpine Village, apparently because they like to come onto site and eat all the flowers.

The locals call the Elk "Wapiti" (woppitee). They are very similar to our native Red Deer here in the UK but I believe they can grow much larger. One of them had a collar on it and we later found out that this is an identification tag. If an animal hurts a human, they get tagged. White=1 incident, yellow = twice, etc.. Three strikes and they are out! How annoying this is when you see the tourists hounding them and trying to get closer and closer all of the time just to get a snapshot with their four year old standing within touching or goring distance.

I promise that we were at a safe and respectful distance and I only managed to get these shots thanks to the power of camera and lens technology. The most beautiful and unforgettable moment of this evening, if not of my life so far, was when Sarah really connected with the fact that were among genuinely wild animals, in their natural domain, and yet as long as we didn't disturb them, they were happy to let us watch. It was a genuinely moving experience for me when she told me how thrilled she was to be there, and how truly special a moment this was always going to be for her...

Here she is, taking in the view and a few rays the next morning just across the road from our cabin.

More scenery from behind the Tekkara...


Oh yes... another of our regular cabin visitors. This little guy was very entertaining! An American Robin. About the same size as our own Blackbird, perhaps a little bigger, he constantly filled up his beak with as many worms as possible from in the lawn. I tried to count them several times but he wouldn't let me.

Then there was this chap... When Linda wasn't burning stuff she watched him dig up his nuts and stuff from just infront of the cabin next door, and then he'd hop along our balcony and bury it all over again just feet away.

He was quite tame really, and didn't mind having a lens shoved at him. When he'd had enough though, he always let me know in the most vocal way he could. Noisy little Tufty!



The last picture in this episode sums up for me what all this was and is about... Getting away from it all, switching off, drinking in the amazing surroundings, the cleanliness of it all, the sheer peacefulness, the beauty, the absolute tranquility of Jasper National Park. Not a care in the world, not a sound to disturb the moment, whatever that moment may be, and this little girl in the picture like many before her over generations and generations, just totally chilled out and happy with a view of the river and the mountains, a belly full of milk and cookies and her new stuffed toy 'Monty, the Mounty Moose' to keep her company.

Mouldy Socks and the Twee Bears

If you go down to the woods today... you're in for a big surprise! Not half! Because the Buffalo Berries have ripened early this year and so... well... I'll come to that in a bit.


“What's that!?” is usually the first thing you hear, closely followed by “What!?..” and/or “Where!?..” then of course you get “There... in the woods... that dark thing... I thought I saw something in the woods!!” and then without a paws (intended!!) it generally goes...

“IT'S A BEAR!!!!!!”, then you get “WHERE??!!!” from several directions and then perhaps “Awww I can't see it!!”, then “THERE!! behind the trees!!” and ultimately it gets a great deal louder and more urgent as the tyres start to screech and smoke and the back of your drivers seat gets ripped up from its anchor once again... “IT IS A BEAR!! IT IS A BEAR!! I CAN SEE IT, IT'S A BEAR!! IT'S A BEAR!!, QUICK!!, STOP THE CAR!!!!!”

So... this is what you may get a glimpse of if you're very lucky... and BOY... were we lucky!

I apologise in advance if you don't like bears, because the whole of this chapter is about bears! There are approximately 300 Black Bears in Jasper National Park, and we were lucky enough to see 16 of them on our trip to The Rockies. Here's the tales and pictures behind one or two of them. I took hundreds of pictures and Linda took hours of film so we had to leave out loads and loads of images just to give you a flavour of what we encountered.

“You won't see any bears at this time of year!” I was told by one or two people, “It's too early! You need to go at the end of August, or September when they're getting hungry and ready for winter and don't expect to see any cubs 'cos the mothers will eat you alive and display your head on a spike by the side of the road if you go within 3000 miles of their cubs!” So... I didn't expect to see any.

You know there's something by the side of the road up ahead because driving through the mountains is a somewhat solitary experience. You're amazed if you see another vehicle at all so when you see several of them ahead of you, all parked, well... more like abandoned really, by the side of the road in front of you, you are pretty certain that there is some form of wild animal to see. As you approach the gathering paparazzi of far eastern tourists climbing up on step ladders, onto SUV roofs, on top of each other, or their children, or each others children, you can be forgiven for thinking that you may actually be about to witness the second coming of The Lord himself, in the flesh, right there in front of your very own eyes. How the animals manage not to eat at least one small person from each party just for fun is way beyond me, and that's just when it's only a Gopher, or a Deer!

So when they've spotted something like this below...

...Forget it! You may as well stay in your car, climb over the back seat and snuggle up beneath the coats with your Bovril and your Graham Crackers because you could be in for a very long wait. You just sit there, or lie there, hoping for one of two things to happen. 1) The Park Ranger comes along and fires his gun to scare off the bear(s) and then threatens to arrest every one unless they disperse their abandoned vehicles, or 2) the bear flips its lid, bites the head off a small eastern child and plays keepie-uppie with it until everyone runs away screaming and vomiting. Either option will do for me on these occasions but sadly, the former usually wins.

Far far better is when you make a deal with your fellow travelling companions that the first person to spot a wild bear, gets $100. That way, you get to see the bears first and take one or two pictures and you can enjoy the moment, alone with your bear(s) before the other road users spot you and start to descend like Starlings around a crusty slice of Nimble.

Sarah was first to score the dosh when she spotted him:-

Linda spotted Her, and Him, and Her among many others.... including a mother and cub on the same road as our cabin when we returned on foot from Jasper town centre one lovely evening. We did that walk a number of times as well as others just in case we spotted something, and because it was just fabulous to be out in the open surrounded by such marvellous beauty. Even if we did get mouldy socks!

Katie Spotted a mother bear foraging in the woods with Him! On our last evening in the mountains.

We'd eaten dinner and decided to go on one more spotting trip before it went dark... we got lucky one more time AND the youngster even climbed up a tree, right in front of us!! Now that was special...

and I spotted Him...

...on the Maligne Lake road one afternoon:- and Yes! I did get a little too close to this one and had to retreat back to the car blushing and twitching a bit before he/she warned me off! Sorry Bear... Sorry Linda, Girls, Mum and Dad... Oops...

The Buffalo Berries are what brings the bears down from the mountains. They gorge themselves on this fruit in readiness for winter hibernation. They are part of a family of plants called Shepherdia and these in particular are Shepherdia Argentea, or Silver Buffaloberry or Bull berry or Thorny Buffaloberry.

Sometimes all you can see is the bush waving about in front of you as the bear feeds itself, then you may spot an ear... or two.

A fully grown Black Bear can eat up to 250,000 of these berries in a day. Yes... 250,000 berries! That's why it is possible to watch them and film them at this time of year because they are so busy eating that they just aren't interested in you. As long as you don't get too close of course. That amount of berries is about 35000 calories, equivalent to eating more than 85 quarter-pound cheese burgers. Think of that every day for a month... Apparently, Buffaloberries are edible by humans. They are supposed to be quite sour though and can leave the mouth a little dry. Not to mention how dry your mouth would be from trying to steal these little beauties from the bears, and then having to run for your life :-)

After a mild spring and summer this years crop was a few weeks early and somehow, the bears know that. So they came down from the mountains early. Well.. I actually prefer to believe that they came down just to say “Hi” to us...

They are truly beautiful creatures and it was such a pleasure to watch them go about their business. The grown ups are fascinating but when you see a cub, it's such a special display of subliminal communication between mother and child that it's hard to explain.

As well as eating of course, the child wants to play and Mother allows the child to play until such a time that she feels it's time to move on or to concentrate on the matter in hand, gorging. The fur coat is so rich that you can see it ripple as she walks along and stretches to grab hold of a branch. Her eyes are so clear and every now and again you find yourself looking straight at each other as if she's letting you know, that she knows you are there.

Meanwhile the baby turns over rocks and stones to see what's underneath and digs in the soil for grubs, then switches attention to a branch of berries, then chases a flying bug, then takes a swipe at his sister to gain her attention in the game and then they both panic when they realise that Mom has already walked off and they scurry after her only to throw themselves at her feet and offer up a paw for her attention as they roll on their backs.

I'd like to point out that we were actually stood well away from these three,

we watched for around 20 mins as they fed and played but what you can't see in the pictures is that we were on the the opposite side of the road on top of a 40 foot bank, behind bushes, so we were safely out of the way at least from these three. This was along the road to/from Miette at around 18:00 one evening after we'd been up to see the Hot Springs.

We saw an incredible amount of wildlife in Canada and I will be eternally grateful for having the opportunity to see it all and I will share some of that with you in later episodes.

For me though... absolutely nothing can compare to how I feel about having had the privilege of watching these beautiful and fascinating bears, just doing what comes naturally, going about their daily chores, in their very own back yard.