Today was the first of two travelling days. We set off around 9.45am from Ladysmith and Tony and Gwen kindly dropped us at the ferry terminal in Nanaimo. There was an extra ferry on this morning, so while we were aiming for the 11am ferry, we actually just managed to get on the 10.30am one with a couple of minutes to spare. The ferry ride wasn’t particularly...
Today we opted for a quieter day – a tour around the places closer to Ladysmith. We started by heading down to the Kinsol Trestle – just inland from Duncan. This is a wooden trestle bridge north of Shawnigan Lake. The bridge is part of the Canadian Northern Pacific Railway. The line was started in 1911 and the bridge was built by local farmers and loggers...
We stayed overnight at Port Renfrew – a lovely spot overlooking the bay. from there we set off west a short distance to a spot called Botanical beach Provincial Park. We had timed getting there for low water as it is an ideal place to explore the tide pools and beach. The wildlife is prolific with sea anenomes, red, purple and orange starfish and sea urchins...
Given a good forecast for a couple of days, Tony and Gwen offered to take us off on a tour of Vancouver Island. Well actually the tour was planned to be just a small part of the south of the island. The island is huge – at 290 miles in length and nearly 100 miles wide at its widest point, it is the largest island in North America (and 43rd largest in the world)...
A day of travelling today. We set off about 9.30am to head to North Vancouver and drop the car off. This should have been an easy run – under two hours, but these things rarely go to plan! We managed about 15-20km from Hope on the Trans-Canada Highway and then came to a grinding halt … Eventually after moving very very slowly for about an hour, we were...
Mainly a driving day today. We set off around 9am and headed back on the Crows Nest Highway. After a stop at Deadwood Junction (a very nice cafe) in Greenwood for a coffee and butter tart (!) we carried on via Keremeos to Princeton for lunch. After lunch we headed to the B&B we booked in Hope arriving about 4pm. The host was really welcoming and gave us the full...
Today, as if we needed it, we got more evidence of how big Canada is. We are in British Columbia and BC is 7.2 times the size of England. If you take all of Canada, then it is well over 40 times the size of the UK! Today’s lesson in how big it is was a car tour around the West Kootenay area of BC. Sue took us on a drive around via Trail, Castlegar, Silverton...
The weather today was one of those days which illustrated why Canada is so green. Rain and then some more …. We are staying with Sue in Rossland – a mountain-biking and ski resort, though there was little evidence of either on a day like today. The origins of Rossland are as a gold mining town and there is still evidence of the old gold mines, though...
With only a few hours driving to do to get to Rossland, we decided to spend the morning in Osoyoos. The area is known as a dry, shrub-grassland is one of Canada’s most fragile and endangered ecosystems. Given just over ten inches of rain and snow a year, it is classified as desert. Given that we are driving through the rockies and mountain ranges, this seems...
Having not slept stunningly, we decided to make an early start and headed off about 6.30am. We decided to head for a place called Bridal Falls – just under a couple of hours drive to the east of Vancouver. There we found a restaurant called Ranchers and were inducted into the long process of choosing what you want to eat. Having selected perogies, egg and...