Riding to Ganges, the main town on the island, I collect blackberries and fill my pannier with apples.

Apples are dropping from the trees everywhere on Salt Springs.

Jane has sketched a little map in my black book and I match the landmarks she has featured with a more detailed map from the information office in Ganges. Their cabin, it turns out, is on the far side of the island.

I am struggling up the last of the incredibly steep hills, wondering what I am going to do if Jane and Eric are not home, when I hear a voice behind me: “I don’t believe it!” Jane jogs, seemingly effortlessly, up the hill. I am exceeding glad of the excuse to get off the bike and push.

We walk together up the rest of the hill and turn off the road to a path leading to a tiny cabin sheltered amongst trees. Jane and Eric have only just returned from their own bike trip a few days ago. We share bicycle stories and photos and catch up on news – they are good friends of Sheila. Eric makes popcorn and cooks dinner and I then sleep on the sofa.

In the morning, I go for a walk with Jane. She is an excellent guide, pointing out items of interest, on every scale: mountains, islands, knots in trees, tree bark, mossy banks, clumps of grass, birds – nothing escapes notice. Vultures fly overhead and we lie on our backs on a bed of thick green moss pretending to be dead. The birds are not fooled.

Jane leading the way.

Oak tree at the top of the hill, looking out over the Gulf Islands.

Douglas fir cones.

A spider's web.

Moss, like an animal's pelt.

A tree that seems related to a eucalypt, to me.

Red bark.

A protuberance.

Turkey vulture overhead.

In the afternoon, we go for a swim in a small lake near the house and pick buckets of blackberries. The berries are amazingly prolific this year.

Prolific berries.

A damselfly by the lake. It was so motionless we thought it might be dead until it suddenly took flight.

Jane, picking blackberries.

It rains all night. I enjoy the sound of the raindrops on the roof from my warm bed on the couch and I am not inspired to leave, as planned, in the morning when the torrent has not yet ceased. I decide to devote the day to writing an article instead. While I write Jane makes jam with the frozen blackberries left over from last year. In the afternoon we visit the local cheese maker and sample all their wares – soft goat cheese and a range of lucious olives.

Penny goes off to do some tasks while I unpack and sort out all my stuff. She returns and we go into town for a shopping trip to replenish my food stock and get some supplies for dinner, which is more superb red salmon. I need to repair one of my panniers which has holes in it – the work of a crow at Meziadin Lake. Ian assists with advice and materials for the job and finally I go to sleep in a big, warm, soft bed. Wonderful.

I was planning on leaving the following morning but the ferry to Port Hardy leaves at 7 o’clock and I would have to be at the dock by 6 o’clock. I can’t drag myself away from these kind people so fast and so I decide to stay until the next ferry on Thursday.

On a walk in the forest, Penny teaches me the names of some trees: the vegetation has changed significantly over the last section of my trip and is now almost totally unfamiliar to me. Further north it was quite similar to the Czech forest – at least I recognised spruce, larch and birch.

Penny proves knowledgeable and I am introduced now to hemlock, lodge-pole pine, Douglas fir, red cedar, yellow cedar. The berries, too, have further diversified and I learn to recognise red huckleberries, salalberries and bog cranberries. We discuss various other plants but the rest of the information doesn’t stick.

Tangled roots of a cedar (I think).

Blue huckleberries.

Red huckleberries.

Salalberries.

On Wednesday, Penny and I go on a short sea-kayak expedition. I have been in a kayak before, I know, but I can’t remember when – it was so long ago that all the details of the experience are gone completely. Still, it seems to come relatively naturally to me and soon we are paddling out a channel from Port Edward towards a small island near the mouth of the Skeena River.

Circling the island, we see a family of river otters catching large crabs and small fish.  An otter swims underwater close to my kayak. On the far side of the island, we land on a beach to have something to eat and enjoy the sunshine after a week of wet weather. Prince Rupert is the rainiest town in Canada, apparently, and people here really appreciate the sun when it shines.

Penny preparing the boats.

Kayaks are a good way to travel because you get off the road. Food for thought.

Me on the water.

In the morning, I narrowly avert missing the ferry.  Penny wakes me at 5.12, the alarm clock having failed somehow in its duty to wake me at 5.00. I had prepared and packed my things the night before so I manage to get onto my bike and cycle, in the pitch dark, across town to the ferry terminal in time to embark.

The fisherman has thawed somewhat since last night’s somewhat frosty exchange of greetings and is happy to oblige. He selects what he considers to be the appropriate weight line from his extensive collection and winds it onto a stick for me. His German wire-haired pointer is underfoot attempting to mount the small black dog, that belongs to the hunting outfitters and hangs around the campsite, with great persistence but little success.

Later, when I am putting the last of my things on my bike, the man’s wife approaches with a small bundle. Would I like a fish? The object in her hand is a small, cleaned frozen trout. A fish is not the most practical thing to transport on a bicycle in a pannier in grizzly country but my passion for eating it overcomes any logistical misgivings. Yes, please! I wrap the fish in a bag and then in another zip lock bag and hope that I don’t end up with a fishy pannier.

The day passes happily, cycling and picking berries and in the afternoon I find a nice place next to Bob Quinn Lake to cook my trout. The area is surrounded by thimble-berries, my latest berry discovery. The place is a flat grassy area flooded by evening sun and I toy with the idea of camping there for the night but decide that it is not such a bad idea to put a few miles between my and any fish cooking smells generated by my dinner.

Thimbleberries are even sexier than raspberries.

I cycle onwards and end up, at nightfall, in a dank mosquito infested ditch by the side of the road. Next morning I am up and away with no breakfast but arrive soon enough at Bell 2, a heli-skiing resort. The lodge is pretty quiet at this time of year. I replace my front brake pads and then head for the café for a cinnamon bun and coffee and then head onwards to complete 150 kilometres arriving late and hungry at Meziadin Lake.

The Cassiar Highway.

Mountains and sunshine.

Talk and berries make for a short day, only 45 kilometres, maybe the shortest yet. We cross a river and turn into a rest stop set off the main highway. The area was clearly built to service the old highway which now serves as the access road to it. There are a couple of semi-derelict outhouses and a grassy patch in the middle of a turning circle. We discover a prolific blueberry patch. Walking down to the river, we see another open area on the opposite bank where a second river joins the larger one. It looks inviting and so, in a sudden rain shower, we ride a kilometre, or two, back down the main highway to find the access road.

I set up my tent and then submerge myself briefly in the cold, cold river water. Fish are jumping, the water so clear that they are visible swimming in the fast moving stream. I remember the lure that Lea gave me in Whitehorse and toss out the line, hooking a sizable fish in an instant but as I land it the knot gives way the fish flops back into the water, swimming off with the pink lure still visible in its mouth.

Another perfect campsite.

Tents by the river.

We try to make another hook and lure with a sewing needle and a piece of tin from a drink can but it is not a success and I end up losing the line in the water - so it is pasta again for dinner. We light a fire and sit and talk, shifting occasionally to avoid the smoke.

Campfire by the river.

Campfire.

I wake in the morning and cycle back to the other side of the river to collect blueberries for breakfast. The boy has still not emerged from his tent by the time I am packed and ready to be gone so I sit by the river and write.

Fresh wild blueberries for breakfast.

Eventually we leave the campsite, late in the morning. He is keen to get to Dease Lake, 90 kilometres of rolling hills with a steady rise in elevation, for the bank. Cycling with the boy, I push myself a little more than usual. The last section of highway is under construction. It is muddy and wet, with gravel trucks constantly to-ing and fro-ing with their loads. As we top the summit, black clouds gather, the sky opens and we race downhill in to the icy rain.

Storm on the hills on the descent into Dease Lake.

We arrive in Dease Lake wet and chilled to the bone. Dease Lake, like most of these tiny settlements, is something of a disappointment. There is a store and a restaurant but neither quite measures up to some indefinable ideal. We go to the restaurant, more to warm up than to eat but food is also welcome. The boy is sullen, only reviving a little with the arrival of a substantial pizza. I eat a burger and I am still hungry. After eating, we find a place to put up the tents on the edge of town. I hide myself in the woods as best I can but this area obviously gets a fair amount of use – condom wrappers and other debris dots the area. I don’t like camping so close to town but we both need to restock our food panniers in the morning.

Even an inadequate campsite has its attractions.

It rains all night and I wake from uneasy dreams to the sound of a frantically barking dog a little way off. The boy is up and says he heard something around our camp, a bear, maybe… We break camp and head for town without breakfast. I wander the supermarket looking for things to replenish my supplies and breakfast on some overly sweet apple turnovers and then we seek out the local community college to use the Internet.

Leaving town, the boy and I go not separate ways but at our own pace which separates us.

The road rises again out of Dease Lake. Clouds hang ominously but I feel good. Snowy mountains lie ahead. Rain comes down again after I cross the Arctic/Pacific divide on the long steep descent to the Stikine River. On the other side of the bridge the boy is sheltering from the storm – he has no waterproof gear. I go on, climbing seven kilometres out of the valley. The snow topped mountains pass by and the boy catches up to me. We end up seeking a camp not together but at the same time and place and find ourselves neighbours in a paddock beside a motel/restaurant. It is too late and dark to cook, the location unprepossessing, and so I dine on a tin of tuna, peanut butter and pita bread. It rains again during the night.

I leave early without breakfast and set off with low clouds draped over the mountains, a greyscale landscape. Fifteen kilometres down the road I pass a ‘wilderness resort.’ I enter, hoping for a bakery but find myself in a luxurious lodge restaurant, packed with well-heeled patrons. I order pancakes; the woman at the grill is struggling to feed the crowd and looks exasperated. I sit amongst the stuffed moose and loud bombastic Americans patiently waiting as the room empties. I am the last person served. I eat my pancakes and talk to three female parks and wildlife officers who have just finished an eight-day hike through the ranges. I would love to go up to those mountains.