CANADA
KAMLOOPS
Kamloops is a surprisingly fascinating town that seems to have just realised that Rocky Mountaineer is bringing in
trainloads of affluent people on a regular basis. It isn’t pretty and the welcome
was a couple of out-of-shape Mounties (probably fancy dress) on a shallow plinth. Apparently the two of them do it
for fun and aren’t part of anything official. But Kamloops is charming simply because it hasn’t been sanitised for
tourists. The rough edges remain and the place isn’t, like Banff and Vancouver, focused so unremittingly on guests. The hotel options are scarce but
TOP: Stunning vistas are sure to
make passengers feel snap-happy LEFT: Rocky Mountaineer offers a choice of three service levels
Hotel 540 did the job for what is an evening bolthole, and the Noble Pig pub serving craft beer and friend pickles wouldn’t be out of place in an edgy-but-not-really part of New York. It is starting to add sophistication to its charms, with four local wineries, two brew houses and several good chefs among the latest boasts.
Terra Restaurant, which has taken over an old theatre, serves local food and wine but with a degree of style.
The Cisco Bridges, where the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National railway lines cross each other over this river, must be one of the all-time-great train-spotter spots. More exciting for the child in me were the enormously long freight trains that would take Roger Bannister in his pomp longer than four minutes to run along. Before this trip, the Canada of
my mind was snow, bears, moose and Mounties. So when the scenery started to look a little arid and, dare I say, desert-like, my woolly hat was squirrelled away and out came the flip-flops for an unexpected
spring outing. The temperature and scenery changes on a two-day journey with an average speed of a 50cc moped are extraordinary. One day I was wearing as little as is decent; the next, all my clothes while on top of an icy mountain. We pulled slowly into Kamloops towards the end of day one, having just passed a lake by the same name and a ghost town as quiet as a ghost town abandoned 30 years earlier called Tranquille should be. In the last mile it became clear
that Kamloops is a rubbish place. Not in any derisory way – it’s just a place where rubbish is never
aspire september 2015 — 59
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