We had a slow start to the day after our travel time last night. Kim went out for a dog walk and then we both went and took the train to Basingstoke, like old times!
We saw Curtis’ cousin and his wife and child for the first time! We had some Nandos, lots of conversations and just a really fun time overall!
We took the train back to Kim’s parent’s place and continued to sort out remaining items to keep/not keep.
We had veggie meatballs for dinner and then after dinner Curtis watched the final Great Britain hockey game.
Day 2
We went out for breakfast and then Kim went out to Thorpe Park (the theme park) with Abbie! Curtis had a chill day and did very little.
When she got back, Kim walked the dog again and then Curtis met his friends Ben & Josh for dinner! They went to a Nepalese place in the town, which Curtis didn’t know even existed.
Day 3
This day was another relaxed one, with a baguette being purchased and eaten from the same place as before, of course.
We visited Curtis’ family and when the kids got home from school, we went to the shop with Curtis’ sister, Evie, to buy a few supplies and just hang out a bit.
We went to visit Kim’s family friend Debbie at her house and there were quite a few people there to say hi to us! Kim got to see a lot of people she hadn’t gotten to see yet, which was lovely, and we had some drinks and snacks too.
Day 4
This day was spent packing and getting everyting sorted out, as well as a few remaining items left to sort from when we lived there.
We took the dog out for one final walk and then had a really lovely final dinner with the family at Wagamama, our favourite Japanese food chain in the UK. This was great as a lot of our family were there so we had a great little last time!
We had a drink or two at a pub down the road after and then headed back home to sleep before having to fly the next day.
Day 5
We got a lift to the airport and said our goodbyes, with a few tears from Kim.
We had breakfast at a bakery in the airport which was surprisingly nice and then we went to get a coffee and relax.
We decided to book extra legroom seats for the way home and that was much better! This flight was super easy and we were able to be more comfortable and get a bit of sleep on the 9 hour flight, too.
When we got home, the airport took FOREVER but we finally got through it and onto the train home.
We arrived back home and did very little. It was great to be back at home but we did miss everyone back in the UK!
We drove to Nordfjord to visit our friends at the farm that we visited on our travels around 6 years ago! The drive was through snow as well as a lot of tunnels and we got to see a bunch of new places we hadn’t seen!
On the way, we stopped at a bakery in Rødberg for a cinnamon bun and then we carried on to the farm.
We arrived and had some lunch and some coffee, as is tradition, and we caught up with the family who now have an extra child than they did last time which was lovely to see and amazing to meet them.
We were chatting about badgers being a problem and of course, one appeared! We had to chase it down and trap it.
We walked through the forest and cleared it up, clearing up rubbish and also branches that are in the way. The plan is for them to make it into a field that can be used.
We ended the night with some food and a chat. We got to sleep in the cabin we slept in last time which we loved!
Day 2
We had some breakfast and then went down to where the lambs and sheep live to stack a bunch of firewood/logs so they can dry and are stored for the winter. We love doing this so this was great!
We had a coffee break, as you should, it was really nice to sit and chat with them whenever we had a chance.
We needed to move some wood planks from a trailer onto the floor so the trailer could be used again. There were a lot of planks but we worked with Martin to get it sorted.
We loved the opportunity to feed the lambs, too! Some had to be bottle fed, so it was a super nice experience and something new!
For dinner, we had a big roast with a big lamb/sheep leg which was slow cooked. Kim obviously didn’t eat it but Curtis did and it was excellent! The vegetables were a delicious side too.
We needed to make a fence to put around the new sheep field, so we helped to get that done after dinner, which was nice and relaxing.
Day 3
We started with breakfast, as expected and then right when we were getting ready for getting some work done, there was unfortunately a crazy incident with a stabbing in the local town.
This meant that we needed to be vigilant just in case and also the owners of the farm went to see if they could get their kids from school and to see if they can help at all.
The craziness went on for a while and once the evening hit, we walked around and checked all the old fences for holes or trees sitting on them before moving the sheep to their new field!
We had a beer in the sheep field once they’d moved and it was a very nice feeling to see our work come to fruition.
We finished our time there with a curry night! Martin made some really good homemade curry and we even had a visit from one of their friends who sat and had some food with us as well.
We had about 1/2 a day left after this, which will be covered in the next post!
We loved visiting the family again and we can’t wait to head back, see even more farm improvements and help them out.
It’s been 5 years or so since we’ve been in the UK so we thought it was time to visit the family and friends in our home land.
We arrived around 11:00, got picked up from the airport by Kim’s dad and then we went back to Kim’s parents’ place to stay.
We showered and went right out to get our first food item that we’ve been wanting to get for a while…A baguette!
There’s a baguette shop in our hometown (Andover) that sells terrific baguettes, so we walked down to get that and have some lunch.
We relaxed for a bit but stopping ourselves from sleeping after the long travel.
We went to see Curtis’ mum and then we both went with her to meet Curtis’ siblings from school and surprise them! They were surprised, as expected, and they both cried!
After picking up the kids from school, we stayed at Curtis’ family’s house for a bit and hung out with them until we got picked up by Kim’s sister, Abbie, and driven back to Kim’s parents’ for some Chinese food!
That was the end of the first day, which was mostly just getting acquainted with the timezone again and eating food.
Day 2 – Andover, UK
We finally got to take the dog out for a walk with Kim’s family. It was nice to see the doggo again too and be able to take a walk around places we used to walk around a lot.
We needed to go to the bank to get some boring admin stuff sorted but it was good to get that done. We had to visit 2 banks in total but we did it all in a day!
There was a bunch of stuff that we had left in the UK that we really needed to sort out. There was a large pile at each of our parents’ houses so we each had a bunch of stuff to sort. We spent a lot of this day sorting Kim’s items and deciding what to keep (which wasn’t much!).
We had some leftover Chinese for dinner and watched a movie.
Day 3 – Andover, UK
It was time for another dog walk! We took the dog out for another nice long walk and had some decent weather too.
We then went out for brunch with Curtis’ parents at a ‘new’ garden centre, which was really tasty and nice to hang out with them.
Before heading out, we stopped in at our first UK shop on our trip so we had a great time walking around there finding all the great snacks and seeing how cheap everything is!
We had to get ourselves a UK SIM card for whilst we’re visiting which we can also use in other countries, so we went into the town to buy one of those.
Curtis then went back to his family home and cleared out his items that he left 5 years ago and mostly just got rid of everything!
In the evening, there was a really lovely family BBQ at Curtis’ family’s house with a lot of his family as well as Kim’s family so it was a really great gathering with great weather.
Day 4 – Andover, UK
We went out for breakfast with Kim’s family down at a local pub and then went out to Basingstoke for some shopping and wandering around! We used to love going there for shopping and a few other things so it was good to see what was there and Kim was able to take a look at a few shoe shops, too, to see if she could find something she needed.
Once the evening came, we met with a bunch of friends and had some drinks and pizza! We hadn’t seen most of them for many, many years so it was a lot of catching up, chatting and having a really good time!
We found it easier to stay in Basingstoke, so we booked in to a Premier Inn, which is one of our favourite chain hotel brands in the UK so we wanted to stay there too!
Day 5 – Andover, UK
We had breakfast out at the pub again on this morning and then we went over to visit Kim’s sister at her house and see the house for the first time which was amazing to see!
We then had a really nice picnic in the garden as it was Kim’s mum’s birthday! This one was of our more relaxed days which was really nice to have.
Day 6 – Andover, UK
This was a day of meeting with our friends!
Kim met with 2 friends separately, Ashleigh & Eloise, and she had a bunch of really great conversations with them!
Whilst Kim did that, Curtis met with Shane, who was his best man at his wedding. He had lunch with him, and some drinks which was great to catch up. There was a lot to talk about.
We went out to Curtis’ auntie’s house to see her and her family and it was very, very nice to see them.
Dinner was at Curtis’ family’s house which was really nice to get some time with them and Curtis got some home cooking from mum!
Day 7 – London, UK
We took the train to London in the morning which was exciting! We love taking the train and it was super easy from where we used to live.
We did some walking around/shopping, as you do in London, before we went to meet Kim’s cousin, Bethany, in Camden!
Kim used to love going to Camden so we went there to go to the food market with her cousin, who is super lovely and we had a great time chatting and wandering around with her.
Once we finished up with Bethany, we took a train to a place we’d never been to before called Kingston. We met with a friend who lives there and had some dinner with her as well as a nice walk along the river.
We had to take a couple of trains to get back to Andover but we were close to the final train so we had to get a move on and do that! It took a while but we were able to get back home for some sleep after a really busy but amazing day!
We were away for a long time, so this is just part one, but it’s been a while since there were any blogs, but enjoy!
Well hello! It’s been a while, as expected, but we have some recap to do!
Christmas happened and we had no plans, but that was great. We had a nice veggie roast and had some chats with our families throughout the day.
Snowboarding
Kim went out snowboarding with a colleague. They went for an evening and got back fairly late, but had a really fun time! Kim basically had to re-learn from scratch, but her friend was happy to teach her again.
Kim loved it so much and is going again this coming Tuesday!
Another Dog!
We fostered another dog! August, the previous dog, went on to a long term foster and we didn’t have a dog for a bit, but then we went down to the boarder to pick up Harper!
He’s a very good boy! He’s a German Shepherd, Husky, Malamute & retriever mix!
Very lovable dog who loves cuddles and we’ve loved having him around.
We took him out to Steveston today. He loves car rides and seemed to enjoy Steveston and meeting all the dogs. We let him run around a bit (on the lead) and he was having a great time.
A New Job!
Curtis is starting a new job in a week!
Curtis will be joining Legible, where Kim works, as their solo IT person (as a Senior IT Specialist). He’s very excited and glad to be able to get in and help them out with IT and also advance his career!
We officially got accepted for permanent residence here in Canada!
So what does that mean?
This means we no longer have any restrictions like we did on our permits and we can stay here in Canada for 5 years before we need to renew it (which is apparently easy).
What next?
We need to get our PR cards, which we can do online and once we get those, we can get our new SIN (social insurance number).
Once that’s done, the process is done! Then, we’re able to come and go as we please and work here as we please for 5 years.
This is all exciting! We are glad the process is finally done and we’re residents of Canada!
We’re back! Hello! We went on a little trip to Sunshine Coast for Curtis’ birthday. You can read about it here.
On Tuesday 14th September, in the evening, we drove out to Horseshoe Bay to catch a ferry out to Sunshine Coast. Whilst it is not an island, it’s technically connected, there’s no other way to get there without a boat, so we took the ferry.
The ferry arrived late, but that didn’t make much difference to us, other than the fact we were hungry!
There weren’t many people on the boat, so it was quick and easy to get ourselves some food. We ate that and then the ride was pretty much over. (it’s only 40 minutes).
We drove off the boat and drove on to our first accomodation, which was a cute little cabin!
Here’s a low quality video of the cabin!
When we arrived, the cabin was incredibly cold as the windows were open, but after a bit of time with the fire on it got nice and toasty. We arrived fairly late, so once we got settled we watched a little bit of TV before sleeping.
Here’s another low quality video of the cabin!
Day 2
We woke up in the awesome cabin and drove down to Gibsons for a spot of breakfast.
We got a breakfast bagel each from a cafe there. The staff were wonderful (and one was British!) which made it a very nice experience.
Once we had our breakfast, we had heard that people were filming down the street for a holiday film! We went down to check that out, but not much was happening at the time, other than there being some fake snow on the floor.
We walked around Gibsons for a bit as there was a nice little marina area and the sun was shining!
After walking for a bit, we found a park to go to for a hike/walk!
We drove to Cliff Gilker Park where it said there were waterfalls and hiking trails, which sounded perfect.
The walk was through the forest with nice big trees and some really nice little wooden bridges!
We saw the waterfall, but it wasn’t really much of a waterfall, but still peaceful.
We walked around here for quite a while, mostly to just find all the bridges…we love bridges!
Once we left here, we drove to a petting zoo to let some animals, but unfortunately it was closed on that day, so we turned around and drove to something nearby that we found, called Robert’s Creek Pier.
Robert’s Creek is a small town with some nice little buildings that we looked at and when we went down to the pier we nearly got blown over it was so windy!
Wind!
We drove back to the cabin and had a look online for some places to get food and also a look for other things to do whilst we were in the area.
We eventually found a place for dinner, which was a Mexican place. Luckily, they were able to seat us once we got there (they were very busy!) And we grabbed ourselves some pretty tasty Mexican food!
We went back to the cabin and watched a bit of TV and relaxed.
Whilst relaxing, we heard some noises outside, so we checked and sure enough, it was a BEAR! We saw him right next to our cabin trying to get at the bins, but we think he scared himself away when he knocked over the bin.
It was our first time seeing a bear in the wild and it was pretty large and right outside!
Day 3 – Curtis’ Birthday!
We woke up, got ready and left the cabin to grab some breakfast.
We went to a cafe (after a bit of back and forth between two) and managed to get a seat. It was pretty small and busy!
We had to wait 45 minutes for our food, which seemed pretty long, and when we got the food it was…Alright. It looked good but wasn’t incredible. Curtis had a smoked salmon and dill cream eggs benedict whilst Kim had a breakfast bowl.
We left here and tried to go to a few cool looking spots with nice views, hikes and waterfalls, but they all seemed to be closed for some reason!
We ended up finding a park near the new cabin we were moving to, so we sat there for a bit and stared into the water.
We checked in to the new cabin and it was not quite as we thought. It looked like a cabin, but was pretty large. It was quite dark and just not as good as we hoped. But it did look cool!
Looks cool outside, right?
We relaxed for a bit once we got in. The weather had started to deteriate, which we knew was going to happen, so we prepared to just hunker down and do very little.
Kim found a really nice brewery called Batch44 and we headed there for some drinks and dinner. Kim also found out there was a quiz, so we entered that and didalright! We weren’t last, which is a win!
We headed back to the cabin and got some really good sleep.
Day 4
It was raining all day, so we just slept and stayed in, watching some TV and playing card games.
We went and got pizza for dinner. Nothing fancy but a bit of a tradition for lazy days!
There was a large wind/rain storm which blew over a power line! This caused us to have an outage and, as the power line was laying on the only bit of road in/out of the town, we were stuck in the dark!
We were able to get some candles from a neighbour and we spent the night playing cards and chatting. It was kinda nice, in a way.
We didn’t get too cold and headed to bed. We were however awoken around 02:00 when the power came back on! But we were glad that was able to get sorted.
Day 5 – The Final Day
We woke up and got some breakfast at a diner style place and then looked for something to do before we needed to catch our boat.
We found somewhere called secret beach (it was sign posted, so not very secret!) And we had a wander around on the beach and the logs that were on there.
Pretty nice place!
Kim found a nice rope swing and had some fun on that!
We took the ferry home and drove back. It seemed to take far less time!
We got home and made some dinner and then it was time for Curtis to play hockey. He’s finished his 3rd game now and is really enjoying being back out there on the ice.
Curtis has a goal and two assists already, all of which came from the last game!
And there we have it!
That was our sunshine coast trip. We hope you enjoyed having a blog to read again. We had some fun times and we were excited to share it with you.
Maybe we’ll have some other fun stuff coming up at some point, but we hope everyone is well.
It’s been an awesome 1656 posts, but now, we think the time is right to stop with daily blogs.
Why?!
Well, after this long of daily blogging, it can be a lot of work. Of course, COVID hasn’t been great for content and posting about work each day is fairly mundane (for both us and you) and difficult.
Don’t get us wrong, we’ve loved sharing our lives with everyone. For something that started just to keep a few family members in the know whilst we travelled, to something that has grown far more than we expected…It’s been awesome.
We now have all of these memories on a site we can visit whenever we want to see the awesome things we’ve done. That’s amazing.
What Now?
We’ll still be around & we’ll still post here!
We want to only post when it’s something exciting, important or interesting.
If we go on a trip, we’ll post, for sure.
We’re not sure if it’ll be daily, weekly, a roundup or whatever, but it’ll be something. We don’t want to give a specific schedule because we don’t want to put that time constraint on ourselves.
What you should know is that the content should be far more interesting, engaging and just overall better!
Goodbye For Now
We guess this is goodbye…for now.
Thank you all SO MUCH for the continued support.
Apparently 750 people follow this blog, and they’re just the subscribed people. 750!
What an insane number.
We’ve posted for over 1600 daysin a row.
We didn’t miss a day!
We have had nearly 40,000 views on this blog. That’s another insane number. Thank you.
We’ve hunted for wifi to get the blog uploaded countless times, in countless countries. We wouldn’t change that for the world. That was part of our travel experience and it was fun (at times).
This will be tough.
For over 3 years we have had a daily blog uploaded, so it’ll be tough and weird not to upload a blog, starting tomorrow.
Again, we have things we want to do, and things that’ll happen throughout our lives and as these things happen, or we go to cool places, we’ll absolutely upload a blog (or some blogs) all about our experiences.
Who knows when the next blog post will be. Maybe tomorrow (though unlikely) maybe next week, maybe next month…
All we know is that we are so thankful for everyone that has engaged with us and our blog over the three years.
THANK YOU ALL!
We’ll see you here at some point, for sure.
Feel free to continue staying connected with us on our Facebook, or through each of our Instagram pages!
If you’ve not seen all of our blogs, we recommend going to the visited places page and checking out all the places! There’s some cool things in there.
We got ourselves ready in the morning, had some breakfast, and got packed up and ready to go.
We changed the bed sheets and tidied up, as well as packed all of our stuff away.
Afternoon Tea
We took Linda for afternoon tea at 11:45.
The place seemed alright, but everything was just okay, which was pretty disappointing.
We headed back to Linda’s and hung out with her for a bit more before we had to leave and say goodbye until next time!
Leaving Victoria
We drove up to get our car cleaned at the car wash that we had bought a ticket for before but didn’t get to use on Wednesday.
We were waiting and a woman managed to make her car battery die right at the entrance to the car wash, so it took quite a while to actually get our car washed, so it was good that we left at such a good time!
We left the car wash after it was done and went to the supermarket and picked up a salad to eat on the boat.
We got onto the boat and got a pretty good spot! Masks are now mandatory again indoors, which includes the ferry, which is great!
We ate our salad and then we just relaxed. We were told there were whales, but we didn’t see them when we looked!
We got back to Vancouver and drove home, which took less time than expected.
We got back home and just did very little. Kim had a nice bath with bath salts she bought at her massage and we just relaxed.
We woke up and slowly got ourselves ready. We didn’t sleep well at all last night, so it was a slow morning.
We had some breakfast after we showered and then we relaxed for the rest of the morning.
At 12:30, we left to drive up to Sidney. Linda wanted to go back there after not being there for a while, so we took her there for a wander.
We got a coffee and a treat from the bakery and enjoyed those before walking to the waterside and enjoying the weather and the sea.
We managed to see a beautiful seal, until someone scared it away!
We then sat for a couple of hours facing the water just enjoying the scenery and enjoying people watching. There were a lot of kids playing around us, so it was fun to watch them.
We eventually got hungry so we headed back to the car and got on our way to the place Linda had booked for dinner.
We had planned to meet Linda’s friends, Dee & Steve, there (we know they read the blog…Hello!) But they were unable to attend, so we just went with the three of us.
Kim got a chicken burger and Curtis got a burger and they were alright!
Kim had a chocolate brownie for dessert and then we drove back home.
Curtis was pretty tired as he didn’t sleep well at all last night, so he had a little lay down and Kim did a bit of research for some things.
We didn’t do too much for the rest of the evening, just relaxed and chatted, really!
Kim did go out and check out Ogden Point, which she likes to do when here.
We woke up after sleeping very early last night and felt very well rested.
We had some cereal for breakfast and Kim then went out for a hot stone massage! She really enjoyed it, actually. She felt like jelly!
Mattick’s Farm
Kim got back and we went out to Mattick’s Farm.
This was only about 20 minutes away and once we got there, it was coffee time!
They had a restaurant and tea room, so we went to the tea room and got ourselves coffee and snacks. Curtis got a cinnamon bun and Kim had a tuna and mayonnaise sandwich.
We left here and went to play mini golf! They had a mini golf place at the farm, so we took Linda to play her first round ever!
The game was pretty close, actually, with Curtis coming out with the win in the end.
We really enjoyed that, actually, and it wasn’t really in the sun either, which was good for us.
We drove back toward Victoria and on the way, we stopped at a supermarket which is known for really cheap fresh fruit and vegetables, so we got in there and got some produce there.
Delicious Dinner
We got back home and relaxed for an hour or so and then we went to a restaurant that Linda has been visiting for a long while.
Curtis and Linda shared a ceasar salad and Kim had a French onion soup, which was her first time trying! She really enjoyed it actually, though it was a lot for her!
Curtis had a steak which came with potatoes and veg and Kim had chicken marsala with mushrooms and veg, too.
We really enjoyed our dinner and were perfectly full.
We headed back home and had some strawberries which Linda bought at the veg store today.
Drinks With Another Friend
We went for drinks with a friend of Kim’s from work just down at the brown’s social house in Victoria.
Curtis hadn’t met her before and Kim hadn’t met her in person but we had a good chat and a drink before heading back home to Linda’s.
We’re heading out again tomorrow, so that should be fun!
Mr & Mrs Hale 