Page 19

Spawning Grounds

The bridge at the top of this page is in Nelson, a strange town which has a reputation for hippies and alternative lifestyles but with sky high property prices on account of the beautiful surroundings not many people selling fancy soaps, aromatherapy or yoga classes can afford to live there so the big local problem is affordable housing. So it is not much different from Bishop's Castle although it does have four banks all of which I visited today.
My credit card company were worried about a large foreign transaction so kindly disabled my card, two phone calls later my account is unfrozen (the transaction was for the hire of our truck in Vancouver Island so perfectly OK) but they say I need to use an ATM to unblock my card. This might work in the UK but so far none of the bank ATM's have offered facilities other than giving out money.
Fortunately Gill has a card on the same account which works fine.

Just up the road from where we are staying is a National Park which had a temporary sign outside saying "Spawning", curious we went in for a look There is a shallow stretch of river where Kokanee Sockeye Salmon (try saying that when you are pissed) come to spawn. These salmon were cut off from the ocean during the last ice age so no longer leave the fresh water lake and river but come into the shallows at this time of year to spawn, they then die. There were 1700 yesterday and 2000 today (someone from the parks department counts them). Half the stretch of river is open to the public, the other half to bears who rather like a fish supper. Unfortunately we did not see any bears although we were very brave and had a walk through the forest in the hope of meeting some.

We did encounter some brave youngsters on a zip wire trail, 16 runs some of which were frighteningly high, I did ask Gill if she wanted a go but I was relieved when she declined my kind offer.

Our little Air BnB cabin is very high spec with fancy sound systems, a video projector and an outside bath! You pull up a couple of doors in the deck to reveal a bath underneath, I don't think I will be installing one in Pound Cottage, the neighbours might not appreciate seeing me getting in and out of the bath, it might put them off their dinner.

If the weather is good tomorrow we may go up to the local glacier for a walk, a full report will appear in due course.