Today we woke up in Revelstoke in the SameSun Hostel (it’s good – a wooden building with solid oak floors, nice staff and friendly guests). The original plan had been to drive across to Kelowna today, without doing any filming. But Revelstoke cries out to be filmed, as it’s full of old wooden buildings, and it’s got a fantastically rustic atmosphere. So over dinner last night we hatched a cunning plan with Director Mat.

First off, Sarah was filmed with the girls in the Farmers Market – everything from trying on hand-made jewellery and trinkets, to buying and eating sweetcorn and hotdogs. All in all it’ll probably make up 30 seconds of the whole programme, but it took 2 hours to film, with lots of ‘walking towards the camera’and ‘walking away from the camera’ shots. But the girls enjoyed it, and their reward was a trip on the horse drawn buggy around town.

Charlotte even got to man the hot dog stall for a while, which chuffed her to bits, but she was praying that nobody would actually buy a hot dog from her!

Then Sarah went to a children’s pool with the girls, while I went to the Railway Museum to do my bit of filming alone (well, without Sarah and the girls, but of course I still had Mat, Steve and Patsy with me – but I was alone in front of the camera). I know nothing about steam trains, so trying to ask the right questions, in the right way, with a camera a few inches from my face was a testing experience. And then it was into the back yard of the railway museum to summarise the last week to camera, and explain what its like travelling with the children (Sarah and I compared notes later – we’d both been asked similar questions, so we hope that we’d given the same answers – very Mr & Mrs). Probably the most difficult thing was the walkies – walking around a train on a path, being filmed. It’s nerve wracking, because you think that at any moment you’re going to trip on the stairs or something equally dumb. And you also become incredibly self-aware – what happens if I walk like an idiot, and 8 million people laugh? And what do I do with my hands? And does my bum look big in this? etc etc

Anyway, all of that meant that we didn’t leave Revelstoke until 2pm, but as the girls had been swimming it meant they fell asleep in the car, which helped to get the 3 hour drive over without too much trouble (we did, of course, reward them with a McD’s meal when they woke up).

And now we’re in Kelowna, in the International Hostel, two blocks from the beach. Emily and Charlotte have settled into trhe travelling lark easily, and quickly suss out what’s the best thing to see and do in a new hostel. It took them 5 minutes to find the TV and VCR, and find the stock of Disney videos. The hostel is a bit more of a ‘party place’ than others we’ve stayed in, which means that the grown-ups are a bit surprised to find that MTV is off, and Disney is on, but their all relaxed about it!

Anyway, another day done, and counting down our last four days in Canada. We can’t believe its gone so quickly, and we’ve enjoyed it so much, but we’ve got a back breaking schedule ahead of us for the last 2 days, so tomorrow will be great – a visit to a vineyard for filming, and that’s it. And the girls have spotted that there’s a water park down the road, with huge slides, so that might feature in their afternoon too!