It has been an eventful week with our flight on Monday having been cancelled due to fog at Kelowna airport. This meant we had the pleasure of another trip on the ferry from Victoria back to Vancouver. The ferry took us round islands with scenery very similar to the west coast of Scotland. We then spent the next 7 hours on the bus as we covered more than 530km to reach Vernon. Once we had checked in we walked round the corner to Vernon Ice Rink where we had drinks and nibbles before returning to the hotel for the evening game. We played 2 games at Vernon where my rink managed a win in the morning game. It was our rest game so sat out from the afternoon game. The opposition were putting up good challenges to the Scottish rinks. We then travelled to Kelowna the next day where we played on 1 of 3 ice rinks which is a 12 sheet ice rink. It was an amazing experience to play on such a large ice rink. Evening entertainment had a strong Scottish theme with pipers and Scottish Country dancers. The chat was good with our Canadian friends.
The next morning (Thursday) we said good by to our bus driver who had taken us all the way from Vancouver to Kelowna. We made a small presentation of thanks before we boarded the bus to the airport. Today we were flying over the Rockies had hoped for good weather on our flight. The weather obliged & the views of the Rockies from the air did not disappoint. We arrived at our hotel and relaxed before heading out to a steakhouse to meet up with tomorrows hosts.
Our hosts gave us an excellent welcome & made us fell very welcome for our double game of curling on Friday at Sherwood Park. This was a multi sports venue with curling just being one of the many sports taking place at this venue.
The opposition had studied our rinks profiles & had stacked their rinks accordingly. My rink came away with back to back wins.
We left Sherwood Park for Leduc Curling Club which was our first multi sports centre. There were many activities going on in the sports centre while we were curling. The rink we played against this morning will be playing in this afternoon’s venue at Sylvan Lake. This is another multi activities sports centre which had recently been built. The venue was super and we managed a draw in our game. We had our banquet within the sports centre which was well supported by fellow curlers, from both the morning game and the afternoon game.
Yesterday we traveled initially to the Olympic Park in Calgary where we were shown round the winter multi sports centre which is used to train the Canadian Winter Olympic Team. We later headed off making for Banff. Once in Banff we had a tour round the Banff Springs Hotel which was very informative.
Today we are curling at Banff Curling Club which is quite unusual in that it has windows in the ice hall.
Will update you soon.
Kind regards,
David
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