An eight hour flight led us to touch down in Vancouver, British Colombia not far off the time we set from London. Terminal 5 was surprisingly a smoothe transit and was so deserted that we wondered if we were in fact in the right place.
Our car hire and driving on the correct side of the road in Vancouver went swimmingly well apart from that fact that the roads are so broad, anything from 4 to 8 lanes, that unless other cars are on the road its difficult to place yourself on the right side of the dot to dot surfaced tarmac. There was an incident with driving up the left hand side of the road onto oncoming traffic, some horrendous road works by night on the way back from Whistler, many tram-buses to contend with and some really weird pedestrian walk rules and car priority rules on turning right over red lights. Under all circumstances the key is don’t hesitate just drive!
Stanley Park surrounded on three sides by ocean with the mountains looming over it and Vancouver City sky scrapers practically tickling the shore line its pretty cool. We, that is the royal ‘we’ decided on a run around the 10km circumference of Stanley Park at 7.30am with a promise of a slap up Canadian breakfast at the end. It turned into an 8am start of what was one of the most impressive runs I’ve ever been on although I have to confess I found it difficult to look up and enjoy the scenery as I was concentrating on making it round, lungs bleeding and a face of steel. Breakfast was predictably an enormous portion of Blueberry pancakes and a massive relief to tick the run round Stanley Park box.
