isobelmtl
Writing under a Montreal sky
Recent Blog Posts
about
Category: Uncategorized
-
St Jean Pied de Port has seen so many souls set off on the old old pilgrimage route known as the Camino. I arrived by train, passing through tiny mountain villages with the train track hugging a narrow rushing river. The train was full of backpacks and speculation about the weather. Next to me…
-
My flight was uneventful although the scene in Montreal was pretty chaotic. Many people seemed to be leaving town with all their worldly possessions . I should have thought more carefully about those zip off shirts/ pants though. As if my artificial hip wasn’t enough for the scanner to catch. My entry into France was…
-
The innocent clump of thistle was the cause of my fall. The toboggan hill in the park has become my favorite training zone. I developed the habit of walking up and down as many times as I could. I go down backwards to stretch the backs of my knees. It’s good for my balance too…
-
These pictures were taken after my “training” yesterday in the beautiful early evening light. I found clumps of wildflowers and noticed that some petals of the wild daisies were falling. The white flowers (help me out with a name, readers) were changing into seed pods and that chestnut trees were starting to form their prickly…
-
It started a long time ago It started when I began to walk up this toboggan hill in my local park, when I started to stomp around the track using my hiking poles (see them thrown down in the grass?). It started when I saw on Facebook that a friend I had met on a…
-
I have been fortunate over the past few weeks to spend time in the Pacific Northwest on Vancouver Island. Part of my almost daily routine has been walking trails along the beach. The beach here is nothing like the bucket-and-spade golden sands we associate with summer holidays. My path often takes me down through a…
-
One of the unexpected joys of visiting my daughter on Vancouver Island is recognizing wild flowers familiar to me from my childhood in Wales. Among the most spectacular is this golden broom. Real bluebells are growing on my daughter’s lot and this combined with holly made me stop in my tracks. The sweetest memory was…
-
There is something so Canadian about this notice. As I prepared for an awe-inspiring hike on the East coast of Vancouver Island this provided a chuckle. Also very Canadian but not so whimsical was the note on the trail-head notice board that zero days had elapsed since the last bear siting in the park. Since…
-
On Vancouver Island what strikes me as so different from my home in Montreal are the trees, the shrubs in gardens, the whole green vibe of the place. “Vibe” huh? Into this West Coast thing already! I am here visiting my daughter who has just got in under the barbed wire fence that is current…