British Columbia Road Trip – Day 1

Those of you reading my work blog Panlibus, will know that I’ve been in Canada for a few days at the Access 2007 Conference.  As I said in my retrospective posting about it:

The team from the University of Victoria Libraries who organized this year’s Access Conference need to be praised for bringing together an excellent conference, in an excellent location in a beautiful city.

It seemed silly to come all this way to just see a conference hotel, two taxis, and an airport lounge, so I have delayed my departure back to the UK for a couple of days for a little me-time to see the country.

Victoria, where I have spent the last few days is the capital of British Columbia, and is located at the southern tip of Vancouver Island.  I’ve rented a small car and am heading north on a Sunday morning.

The first problem is that Vancouver Island is far bigger in reality than it appears on the tourist maps.  Seven hours drive from Victoria in the south to Port Hardy in the north, where all you can do is catch a ferry to somewhere off the map or turn around and head back south.  Several people at the conference suggested a visit to Cathedral Grove, in MacMillan Provincial Park, “… one of the last accessible forests of giant trees remaining in B.C. To walk along Cathedral Grove’s trails is to walk backward in time and to wonder at Nature’s marvels.”, so why not.

I was a little disappointed that the trails between the trees did not take you further away from the road but the trees, many of which were Western Red Cedar, were indeed very impressive.  As well as big trees the park is subject to big winds.  The way some of the enormous tree trunks had just been cast around the forest floor, is the kind of thing that makes you feel small.

On the way up to Cathedral Grove, I stopped in for half an hour at the port town of Nanaimo.  Maybe it was because it was Sunday, but this place seemed a sleepy welcoming place with harbor side artists and stalls.  With the sounds of a bagpipe drifting across the sunlit scene, I can feel myself coming overall poetical in describing it.

The road to MacMillan Provincial Park is a western detour off the main north south highway that runs up the east side of the island, I continued on from the park a few miles to Port Alberni, which nestles between the tree covered mountains at the top end of a 30 mile long fjord to the western coast.

Port Alberni is yet another sleepy place, even more sleepy at the moment as the forestry workers are on strike, and the lumber mills are not in action.   The beautiful views from the harbor make you want to hop on a boat and cruse down the steep sided fjord to the sea, but unfortunately there were no trips in operation.  Also not operating was the old steam train trips up to the steam operated lumber mill, so there was nothing else for it than to partake of coffee and a maple donut from the shop that sells ‘The best donuts in the world‘ – well the one I had was excellent. 

Heading back east, having convinced the lady in the sat-nav that I wanted to go on the old coast road instead of the new highway no matter how much she insisted I turn around, I was heading north up the side of the Srait of Georgia, either alongside the beach or taking in views of the many islands large and small off the coast.

Early evening brought me to Little River, and the excellent Singing Sands B&B, appropriately located on the corner of Wally Road, run by an ex Yorkshire Cheese sales executive and her husband.  Her recommendation took me to the local Griffin Pub, where a couple of beers and a barbeque steak got me settled down for the night ready for a very early start in the morning – the 6:30am ferry to Powell River on the mainland.

More pictures from the trip are now starting to appear in my Flickr account here.