After Monday night's defeat to Canada at the Catalogna Soccerplexe in Lachine, M
After Monday night's defeat to Canada at the Catalogna Soccerplexe in Lachine, Montreal, Tuesday saw the England Women's team hit the road for the Canadian capital Ottawa.
Canada v England
Women's Senior International Friendly
Thursday 22nd May, Ottawa
12midnight Kick off (BST)
When on a tour of this duration, the Head Coach has a number of personnel with them who provide crucial support along the way, and Tuesday saw a particularly happy start for Team Administrator Helen Nicolaou, when the squad's arrival in Ottawa coincided with the re-emergence of some clean training kit that had failed to arrive in Montreal.
With the thought of having to train in dirty kit not overly appealing, it meant the afternoon's training session at the curiously named Keith Harris Stadium could go ahead as planned.
Although Orville and Bubbles failed to make an appearance, the training session was notable for a beaver that emerged from the undergrowth to chase some training balls along the touchline, and for a surface that could have been used for the grazing of chickens.
Nonetheless, Coaches Brent Hills and Keith Rees threw themselves enthusiastically into a warm-up, broken down to be most intensive for players that didn't play on Monday, and less energetic for those still nursing a few aches from the exertions of the game.
Whilst Charlton's Pauline Cope has already amassed 56 international caps in goal - and trains weekly with first-team men's 'keeper Dean Kiely - Monday night represented Rachel Brown's twentieth appearance.
On Tuesday, both players were full of encouragement for Toni-Anne Wayne, the young 19 year old from Southampton Saints who pulled off a number of good saves in a session aimed at getting the full- backs overlapping and giving the likes of Karen Walker and Ellen Maggs some valuable target practice.
During these sessions, Hope and her medical team of Physio Louise Fawcett, Exercise Scientist Dawn Scott and Team Doctor, Pippa Bennett are constantly measuring the heart rates of the players and ensuring they take on adequate liquids, whilst my role was to retrieve any footballs that strayed wide of the goal - a valuable job nonetheless!
After the compact confines of the 2,000 capacity Soccerplexe on Monday, Thursday evening's final match of the tour will be held in the capital's Frank Clair Stadium, which has recently received 'FIFA commended' status.
The 30,000 capacity stadium is another to have a quality third generation 'FieldTurf' surface, and is now eligible by FIFA to be used for international football at any level.
Pre-sales for the game have already reached an impressive 14,000, as the Canadian Soccer Association's Chief Executive Kevin Pipe told a press conference - featuring Hope Powell and Rachel Yankey - prior to training.
There has been an explosion in the popularity of football in Canada in the last two years, so much so that recently player registrations for the beautiful game actually outstripped those of Canada's national game - ice hockey - for the first time.
With a large vocal support expected from the local junior soccer community in Ottawa on Thursday, England hope to finish the tour on a high, although they have already gained invaluable experience from playing against two of the best sides in the world.
Fulham Ladies' winger Rachel Yankey actually played in Montreal during a summer break for Laval Dynamite three years ago, playing in the W1 league which included teams from Canada and the United States, including a New York team that contained her injured international colleague Kelly Smith.
"With an average squad age of 23, this tour has been a very steep learning experience for a lot of our players," Rachel told TheFA.com.
"Even for me - as one of the more experienced players with 37 caps at the age of 24 - to play on the same pitch as an international football icon like Mia Hamm was amazing, and the great thing was, that for 40 minutes on Saturday, we matched the World Champions.
"Then, when the heat began to take effect, and their superior fitness and strength began to take over, they ended up running away a little bit either side of half-time."
With a 6-0 reverse, followed by a 4-0 defeat on Monday against Canada, spirits are still very high in the England camp, and after a post-training cool down in the swimming pool, the players were rewarded for their professionalism and dedication over the last 10 days, with a brief respite from football.
Whilst some players took the opportunity to explore the nearby shopping malls, and to see the new Matrix Reloaded film, before an early night.
Yesterday took the players to train on the new 'rubber crumb' surface at the Frank Clair stadium, which culminated in an autograph signing session alongside the Canadian team, as over 200 local schoolchildren came to meet their heroes, as well as two members of the England backroom team who also couldn't resist!
Back at the England team's Ottawa hotel base, I caught up with Head Coach Hope Powell and she told me a little more about our next opponents; "Canada are now one of the best teams in the world, but again on Monday night, as we experimented with a different line-up and some new tactics, we matched them for the first twenty five minutes, and took the game to them completely for the first twenty minutes of the second half.
"Without question we need to spread the goalscoring burden around the team, but on Monday we created four or five good chances before the sucker punch of their third goal when we had been very much in the ascendancy.
"As I have said all along though, it is always great to win games of football, but for me, with such a young squad, the performances of the players, what they are learning on this tour, and what they take away and bring back when we return for our next game in August/September is of equal, if not more importance."
Tonight's game will again kick-off at 7pm Eastern time (midnight GMT), and will be shown live across the whole of the country on Canadian channel SportsNet.
From Alex Stone, TheFA.com's man in Ottawa
TheFA.com will bring you more news from the camp ahead of the game, and a full match report on Friday morning.