It's 23.30 on the 10th May. This is our last night in Toronto for about a week and a half, and we've had such a fantastic time here. We got up early on Friday morning, and packed up fairly quickly as we didn't really have much space to unpack at Scales in the first place. We said thanks and goodbye to all of the team there, then drive the 25 minutes or so with Adam to the bus station. There was a feeling that they didn't really buy or story that some friends had arrived in Toronto early and we were going to meet them, but by this point it didn't really matter. The greyhound bus was a local service so fairly basic - no Wifi or power outlets, but the trip only lasted an hour ... read more

It's 20:31 on the 5th of May. We've arrived at Scales Nature Park, but I'll get into that on tomorrow's blog. First I'll wrap up our stay in Ottawa. So Friday. We had the day off Friday and so we resolved to go into Ottawa - however Tim was giving the German girls a lift to the bus station that morning so we couldn't get a lift in with him. Instead, Laura was driving to a town called Manitick that was kind of half way between the house and the city, so she was to drop us off there and we'd get the bus the rest of the way. However, once Laura had disappeared into the distance and we had stood at the bus stop for about half an hour, we came to realise that the ... read more

It's 21.54 on the 27th of April. Time for a brief update of life here at the Winchelsea household. Saturday we woke and breakfasted, then set out almost immediately to start back on the slide of the play structure. It was fairly close to zero degrees when we started at around nine, and this made it near impossible to fiddle around with the 50 something nuts and bolts that were needed to build the rest of the slide. We nearly gave up several times, and had to redo some steps again and again as we kept getting the alignment slightly wrong, but at least by lunch the slide was about s metre longer than it was when we set out. The rest of the afternoon was spent in a similar fashion - building, cursing, giving up ... read more

It's 23.01 on the 22nd of April. So, now we're in Ottawa. This won't be a long entry as I'm ready for sleep now. We left the hostel in the rain on Monday, and headed to the bus station in downtown Montreal to catch our 1pm bus - finding a cafe in the station for a coffee and a pastry before the bus was due to depart. The bus journey took pretty much it's scheduled 2 and a half hours, and I didn't see much of the scenery as I was writing my last blog. We arrived at the small Ottawa station and waiting slightly nervously for Tim, Laura Fletcher's husband to arrive and pick us up. Before long we saw the guy we'd picked out in Laura's profile pictures, a tall, well built bald guy ... read more

It's 23.37 on 15th April. What an adventure we've had in the last few days! This is the kind of thing you expect from a 5 month trip! I'll start at the beginning. On Sunday Judie wanted to show us a few more sites around the area, so we all jumped in the car and headed first to the wharf that looked out over a bend in the St-Laurent river, with magnificent views of both banks. Judie told us that once a year there's a canoe race there, but it's always so frozen the competitors push the canoes over the ice most of the way - bar a strip of water at its central point. Apparently they have to time it as well, lest the canoes get mowed down by the huge oceanic liners and freight ... read more