I’ve wanted to do this train journey across Canada for ages. Why not spend some of my Canadian washout days doing this?

Service levels are currently reduced because of the pandemic but the cabin attendant is supposed to come and show you how all the buttons work. Mine forgets, actually, but it is all self explanatory. In non-Covid times they change your sheets for you and pull down your bed but the policy is currently to keep interaction to a minimum so passengers have to be a bit more self-sufficient.

Meal service is similarly reduced, to three or four options on rotation throughout the journey. Lunch is a light sandwich-type option, with a limited choice of four dinner dishes. Meal options are set to be expanded next week, Monday 18th October, of course they are.

You choose between three timed sittings for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The meals are largely fairly well-presented, with a soup – probably from a tin or packet, alas – a main course with a few vegetables or a small salad. It seems to me that Canadians don’t actually do vegetables. A cake-type pudding. Canadian food seems carb- and sugar-rich though the pan fried salmon is a healthier option. If you’re vegetarian, there’s only one option and no à la carte flexibility, so be prepared to eat veggie chilli every dinner for four days.

Setting off on Sunday morning, I go directly to the Panorama car for our goodbye view of Toronto. A Jewish dad with his three children occupies the two front seats of the carriage, having first filmed his B reel (something something instagram. Don’t ask me) of the engine. He and the eldest son, obviously eager to impress his father, give a loud running commentary of every siding, every signal, every engine spec and trackside factory. It’s as if they’re providing this as a service to the other passengers in the dome, taking for granted that we all want to know, without even turning round once to look at us.

The train reverses and I start to feel queasy and this man and his eldest son are making me grumpy. Perhaps they are annoying the smaller siblings too, who knows? In any case, these two are very quiet. The family discusses how, why, when they will leave this train in Winnipeg. I decide to sit in my cabin instead.

We proceed through Ontario at a leisurely pace. This is a bit of a paradigm shift for those of us accustomed to getting on a Eurostar or TGV or even on a GNER train, where we want to get to our destination in the minimum, efficient time. Canada is such a vast country with such a tiny, spread-out population that the railways aren’t really developed outside the main cities. People travel around their communities in their big cars; if you’re on business it’s quicker to fly. ViaRail does not actually own the tracks on which it runs trains. As I understand it, the company rents track time from CN railways, and so passenger trains must yield priority to the long freight trains that chug across the country.

Our train is often in a siding or stuck at a red signal for long periods waiting for a freight train to clear through. In the past, people were advised not to book any onward connection for less than twelve hours after the scheduled arrival time of their Canadian train because it was often hours late. These days there’s a lot of padding built into the timetable to allow for that. We are often an hour or more late into our station stops but the seam allowance ensures that we can catch up the time. At any rate, the train goes by at a sedate pace and you can enjoy the scenery. There’s an awful lot of scenery.

Off we amble, then, through Ontario. The fall colours are showing themselves in all their glory at the moment with the yellow leaves of silver birch trees contrasting nicely with the green spruces along the route. We saunter past sparking lakes and tiny fishing resorts and eventually the scenery transitions to the Canadian Shield, a high mountain range billions of years old that has been eroded over time to rocks with only a thin layer of soil. Lichens the colour of pistachio macarons grow on these rocky outcrops and still there are trees. Lots of trees. Canada loves trees.

After supper I venture to the lounge car for a cup of tea and encounter some convivial company already settled in for the night with the Vancouverite Arcadius and his emotional support dog Hudson holding court.

And so to bed. As I said, these cabins take a bit of getting used to and some feats of self-organisation if, like me, you are a princess with a strict pre-bedtime skin-care regime. You may want to eschew the mental picture of me in the middle of the night unable to lift up my bunk to access the lavatory beneath it, opening the cabin door for a tiny bit more space to put on my shoes and exposing my bare bottom to the corridor. I finally give up, done my long hooded cardigan and scuttle to the neared communal washroom only to find it locked. Luckily the cabin next door to mine is empty so I use the loo there. Not a good look.

I return to bed, to the noise of the train and something whingeing in my cabin, a sound that lasts all night. Then I get the sniffles and decide to take an antihistamine. I wake up groggy from that the next morning and late for breakfast and the queue to book the shower. Still unable to raise my bed, to reach my shower things or clothes, I present myself to all in the dining car the only traveller looking like a dishevelled exotic bird in my silk pyjamas. What larks! Do better, woman.

(Reader, my bed was sticking, as the attendant acknowledged the next morning. It was not just me. I did manage to shift it on the penultimate night and was really proud of myself.)

 Day 2 – Monday 11th October 2021

The second day of the voyage involves ambling across the Canadian Shield. I’d never heard of this before a couple of weeks ago. It extends from Greenland across to the northern United States. Read about it here.

It is beautiful, yes, but a little monotonous after a while. I have my Bach and Handel to listen to but eventually I seek out a cup of coffee in the bar underneath the Panorama Dome at the rear, to be found by a chatty old Canadian geezer who has done this journey tons of times.

People on the train are generally super-friendly and chatty, passengers and staff, and I am left wondering whether all Canadians are extroverts. Or perhaps the introverts just stay in their cabins, I don’t know.

Anyway, as we chat, and as if by magic, the Canadian Shield drops away with the Manitoba border and yields to the prairies. It’s funny how the landscape changes with the state borders, as if defining the people by their accident of birth. Flat as flat, with fields of biscuity wheat and corn and stubble stretching to the horizon.  As the old boy intones:

“The prairies. Where your dog runs off and seven days later you can still see him.”

Excitement builds at our first city stop of Winnipeg. I venture outside the station with its ornate, cathedral-like dome. Not much is happening.

A young man – is he contending with addiction or mental frailty?- gesticulates wildly and aimlessly, or so it seems. It turns out that he makes a living by flagging down taxis for travellers and helping them with their bags. It’s evening on the Thanksgiving Day holiday. Not much is open and people are grateful to him for his micro service.

A few people leave the Canadian at Winnipeg to catch the train up to Churchill on Hudson Bay where, this time of year, polar bears gather and wait for the water to freeze so they can trudge to their feeding grounds further north. I’d like to do this one day. I assume that the train geek family have left to fly home to Toronto, for there is no further sign of them.

Day 3 – Tuesday 12th October 2021

An early stop at Saskatoon in, yes, you’ve guessed it, Saskatchewan on the Tuesday morning.

I book my shower early and efficiently with the train attendant, who quickly ushers me into a free shower cabin before anyone takes it. I’m getting the hang of this.

It is not the same shower as I used the previous day, that had reasonably warm water and a button to press after the water had been running a couple of minutes in order not to waste water. No. This one is HOT, so hot that I am seriously scared of scalding my nipples right off. I press the button to try to stop the flow but that only prolongs it. Running around the shower to try and mix the boiling water with cold air and quickly get myself clean and fresh, I beat a hasty retreat before anyone sees. As far as I know, that water is still going.

We are not allowed to leave the platform on this stop and, to be honest, there’s no reason to. A university Economics Professor from Toronto strikes up a cheery – too cheery for this time in the morning – conversation with me about how she understands both sides of the Brexit debate and how shocking it is that I live in Hong Kong and how I should just leave. Somewhat irritated, I wonder whether she bases her life around the ceteris paribus assumption, the one that assumes that everything else remains equal. It was my main beef with Economics. But it’s cold outside, and I soon retreat to the Panorama car which, for a change, is almost empty.

Saskatchewan rumbles on for mile after mile of prairie and field, Hardly any trees here, which I find odd for Canada. I spot tumbleweed and attempt to take a good picture but I’m using my Big Lens, which can’t seem to cope with the movement of the train. For this reason I miss excellent pictures of cars throwing up dust trails behind them as they speed across the landscape; flocks of waterbirds on the occasional lake and cattle and horses on the farms near the railway line.

We pass trackside grain elevators, used for loading wheat grain onto train hoppers – is that the right word? – for their slow trundle from the centre of Canada to the coasts. l feel slightly proud as I tell myself that this is where they grow the wheat that is turned into the extra strong wholemeal flour that I use for my bread, exported first to Waitrose in the UK and then to Hong Kong. Viewing the endless sweep of these prairies, the world seems huge.

It’s very cold in the Panorama carriage. A French Canadian couple have set up home in the front seat and chat loudly and irritatingly. I retreat to my cabin.

Eventually the landscape takes on a few more contours and we arrive in Edmonton. Oiltown. I’ve missed a couple of good shots of small family oil derricks. I am geekily compelled to wait for Train #2, coming in the opposite direction from Vancouver, which should pass us around here. There’s a long wait for our train outside Edmonton station and I loiter in the corridor, tracking it with the ViaRail app on my phone. I’m not even going to attempt to defend this nerdy corner of my brain here. Some of you will just know.

Edmonton station is several kilometres from the city proper, which does seem odd but this chimes neatly with the historic lack of regard for the railway. It’s late and cold and there’s very little to see so I decide that I’m not even going to get off for this three-hour stop. Besides, the train has arrived late and will depart at midnight, and tomorrow is an early start for Jasper and the Rockies.

Instead I decide to go and have my dinner and strike up a conversation with a Parisian couple who appear to speak or understand little English. I find this hard to believe but welcome the opportunity to speak some French. And then they invite me to eat with them and I manage to keep up a reasonably sensible conversation all through dinner, to my immense pleasure and pride, if not theirs. They are a well-travelled couple and regale me with stories of their journeys in India. The husband is very knowledgeable about politics and we discuss Brexit and how the loss of our Freedom of Movement through Brexit is like the loss of a limb for those of us who identify strongly as Europeans. The wife has no idea that we have lost our right to settle without hindrance or about how the vote was manipulated and gerrymandered. At least she now knows that not all of us Brits are deranged idiots.

She tells me that, awake in the early hours, the previous night, she saw the Northern Lights through her cabin window. Initially sceptical, I look with wonder at her pictures of a ghostly green miasma. The single cabins face south so I had no chance of seeing them, even if I had been up at 2am. Next time I’m going to ask for a North-facing cabin.

Day 4 – Wednesday 13th October 2021

I wake up suddenly and realise that the train has stopped. It is 6.30 and we’ve arrived in Jasper, the renowned ski resort in the Rocky Mountains. I once wrote a piece parodying the sort of sharp-elbowed people who come all the way over here to ski at Christmas and here I am! Not at Christmas and not skiing, though.

By some miracle I can suddenly manage to unhook and lift my bed – perhaps someone has surreptitiously put some oil on the sticky bit – while everyone is to-ing and fro-ing outside in the corridor. I perform a quick review of logistics. If I take the time and get ready properly I won’t have much time in Jasper. Can I even have a shower while the train is in the station? When can I have breakfast? Baby, it’s cold outside. Maybe I should just skip Jasper like I skipped Edmonton?

No. Stop being a fool. I pull the previous night’s hoody and joggers over my pyjamas, push my feet into my barely-worn sheepskin boots, throw my coat on and leave the train, looking like a huddled-up Paddington in -3 degrees.

Once outside I find that there is little to do in Jasper at this time of the morning.

I decide to walk around a bit but the couple of main streets can be traversed in twenty five minutes, tops.

Nothing is open apart from Timmy’s, and in a sudden flash it dawns on me that the train has been rescheduled to call at major stops Winnipeg, Edmonton and now Jasper at awkward times precisely in order to prevent mixing between train passengers and locals. They are stopping us from spreading Covid and if that means reducing service levels, meal options and general possibilities to explore then so be it. Somewhat peeved by this realisation, I retreat to breakfast on the train. We have lost people to Jasper but gained others who’ve been staying there.

After breakfast, showering, dressing I pop up to the Panorama car to find it full to bursting and with good reason: today is Rockies day. Our journey takes us from Jasper through the Yellowhead Pass, which is the Continental divide of Canada. From here on all water flows into the Pacific Ocean whereas before the pass it went to the Atlantic or Arctic via Hudson Bay.

The single track scenery through spruce trees that you can almost touch is breathtaking. Mount Robson is shrouded in cloud, however, and there are too many people in the way for me to get a good picture.This is a recurring theme in my photography. Just another problem of being 5′ 0 tall. We pass snow-capped mountains and skirt mountain waterfalls, rapids and the emerald valleys of the North Thompson and Fraser Rivers. All this beauty carries its own monotony in a way. It’s too much to drink in and process so I go and drink in a Martini cocktail (three olives) in the Dome bar instead.

Day 5 – Thursday 14th October 2021

I have repacked my bags and clothes for the day and they are being pressed underneath my bed. We are scheduled to pull into Vancouver at 8, though the train crew say we’ll arrive at 7, more like. In the event we are delayed for ages and scheduled to arrive only after 9. I eat my unexpected final breakfast of buttermilk pancakes, bacon, sausages and maple syrup almost in defiance of the crew, who have run out of clean white linen for the tables.

It’s a grey, drizzly day and I’m impatient to be off this train and into a large, comfortable  hotel room with a king size bed and a proper hot shower.

Eventually we back into the station and wait for our checked-through bags which take a little while to appear. We say our goodbyes to the cheery people and try to ignore the loudmouths if we find them obnoxious. Not everyone does, of course. Some Facebook friending is done. I wonder whether we’ll ever actually stay in touch. We’ll see.