In 36 hours time

... we'll be hopefully on the road approaching Gatwick. We're off on Wednesday morning (5.55am!) to Canada for two and a half weeks - mainly for a friend's wedding, but as it's definitely the last long-haul flight for the foreseeable future, we wanted to make the most of our fourth - and possibly final - trip to this wonderful country. Our new location means our parents will be sharing house-sitting duties without hopefully putting them too out, while we jaunt through the Rockies. We land in Calgary on Wednesday AM Mountain Time, and on Friday we'll be heading to Canmore with our friends Emma and Paul via a 500km detour to see the Alberta Badlands, which look spectacular. The wedding itself is next Tuesday at Emerald Lake, so the first part of the holiday is spent in the Banff area. We'll then head up to Jasper for four nights before crossing to Edmonton and flying home from there (via Winnipeg - 11 hours!).

And no, the laptop isn't coming with me. I've got a POP mail checker for my PDA, so I can hopefully keep spam under control while I'm gone, and we will frequent Internet cafes on an almost daily basis to update blogs, check email and see how Birmingham are doing (not necessarily in that order).