Daily Archives: March 25, 2010

Bicycling, Fiber Arts

Rain Day – Touring the Saanich Peninsula

After three days of bicycling, covering a bit over 55 miles of trails and downtown Victoria streets, the fourth day dawns in gray, pouring rain.  Forewarned by the weather reports, we had already planned a day out in the car, starting with breakfast.

Our goal today is a tour of Sidney, the main gateway to Vancouver Island, served by airlines and ferries.  First, we open our tourist guide and pick a restaurant for breakfast closer to home that advertises crepes, in the nearby Oak Bay district.  However, when we arrive at the address,  the building is now a sushi bar, open only for dinner.  Such is the force of growth and recession in an area of changing demographics and reliance on seasonal tourism.  We continue on in driving rain, up route 17 to downtown Sidney, looking for Jazzaniah, a breakfast/lunch place that got mostly good reviews on the ‘Net.  The GPS leads us to a parking lot, and we find the cafe nestled in the middle of a professional center, flanked by durable medical equipment stores, medical providers, and florists.  Breakfast is standard fare, but prepared well.

From Jazzaniah, we walk several blocks down Beacon to 3rd, seeking out Fabric Traders, a quilt shop we had spotted while hunting for the restaurant. Andrea, the owner, runs a quilting service on-site and holds quilting classes. The store’s name comes from a unique concept we really liked: all of the fabric in the store is on exchange, like a used bookshop. Customers bring in unwanted fabric for credit, which they spend toward someone else’s fabric. Fabric that stays on the shelf too long or is in too small cuts ends up in chenille doormats, made with layers of print fabric sandwiched with muslin.

Sidney, as the ferry route hub of Vancouver Island, has seemingly curb-to-curb bookshops, which we struggle to ignore, but we do pick up some ferry-boat reading for our trip home at a charity thrift store.   We then stop at Tulista Park, just south of the international ferry terminal, where there is an art show.  To our delight, many of the pieces are fiber art–weaving and felting, and, as a bonus, we get to meet the artists.  We also look up the two yarn shops in Sidney.

We’ve done enough toodling about in the car this week to warrant a fuel stop.  A $20 bill nets us a bit over 18 liters, which translates to $4 US a gallon, compared with an average of a bit over $3 across the Strait in Washington State, and $2.839 at our last fuel stop at the Skokomish Nation on the way to Port Angeles.  Bike travel, rain or not, is beginning to look better and better.  No wonder we see so many Smart cars in Victoria, with their 40+mpg rating (though with premium 91 octane fuel).  Incidentally, the wheelbase on a Smart car is only 6 inches more than the wheelbase on our Santana tandem.

By now, the rain has subsided some, and we take a more rural route back to Victoria, avoiding the busy 4-lane Route 17, taking time to explore the Oak Bay “downtown” a bit more, discussing precious metal clay work with the owners of a bead, jewelery, and antique store across from where the crepes restaurant used to be.  Tomorrow, we load up and head for home, despite the continued civil disorder we hear of in news reports from south of the border, as we have business to tend to and the rain has settled in for the weekend.

Bicycling, Uncategorized

Lochside Trail – Early Spring Biking is Cold

After two days on the Galloping Goose Trail, we had decided to check out the Lochside Trail, another converted rail line that branches off from the Goose at kilometer 4, just over the freeway bridge.  We get an early start, which, after an overnight low of 4C, was a bit of undoing.  We immediately break out the glove liners and zip up jackets tightly, but even the climb up to the freeway crossing doesn’t help.

After splitting from the Goose, the Lochside crosses under two busy roads and soon opens up to an urban wilderness, flanked by residential back yards on one side and the Swan Lake nature preserve on the other.

Swan Lake
Swan Lake, a nature preserve near downtown Victoria

A timber trestle crosses a marsh on the side of Swan Lake, a bit of bone-jarring trip on weathered planks.  We pass houses perched on pilings, hanging far over the steep sides of the ravine through which the trail climbs.

Then, suddenly, we are back in the city, cycling through the heart of Saanich.  The trail crosses busy streets with stoplights, then disappears at a busy intersection.  We dismount and walk the bike up the sidewalk to the top of the hill next to a commercial center, then pedal the city streets for a couple of blocks, following the small blue trail signs to a quiet residential street, where the trail restarts as the walkway before passing into the rural countryside at the end of the block.  Most of the local commuters duck through the parking lot that straddles the old rail line bed through this suburban commercial block.

Soon, the paved portion of the trail ends, at an intersection with a new greenway trail that leads east to the shore, past the southern flanks of 700-foot Mount Douglas.  We’re cold again, with the wind in our face, but press on.  Not far up the path, we come to the Blenkinsop Trestle, one of the highlights of this trail, spanning Blenkinsop Lake and skirting the east shore.

Blenkinsop Trestle, looking north

A bit further north, the gravel path enters a paved farm road, with fields of rich black earth covered with white frost covers, reminding us that it is indeed early in the season.  At the end of the paved road, we turn around and head back toward the city, stopping on the trestle to enjoy the views.

Blenkinsop Trestle
Judy checks out the statue of "Roy", mid-span on the Blenkinsop Trestle

The statue of “Roy” represents the early settlers who carved out farms in this rich valley. We stop at the wide viewpoint near the statue for a snack and watch the ducks and geese on the lake, before heading back into the city and a hot shower.

Mount Douglas
Mount Douglas rises above the farmlands surrounding Blenkinsop Lake

Besides the cold, we have been concerned with the only mechanical trouble so far on our spring shakedown bike tour: The clasp on Judy’s helmet turned up missing when we suited up the first day. I was able to tie the strap to the remaining half, but this morning, the adjusting slide was also missing. While we could still secure the strap, there was some concern whether the helmet would stay where it belonged if needed. After getting warmed up, we took the car out, ending up, quite by accident, at Fort Street Cycle, where the helpful and friendly staff found replacement parts for Judy’s helmet and reminded us that it is getting time to replace our helmets. What a delightful find. These guys are definitely the place to go in Victoria for all your biking needs.

The rest of the day, we motored along the beach drive to Cordova Bay, ending up at Mattick’s Farm, a shopping center near the shore north of Mount Douglas, along the Lochside Trail, at what would have been our biking destination today had we not been turned back by the cold morning.

The next day promised rain all day, so the northern end of the Lochside Trail and the western end of the Galloping Goose trails will wait for the next trip. Thursday’s plan includes a drizzly trip to Butchart Gardens–by car–to take in this week’s spring blooms, though we’ve enjoyed the backyard gardens from the bike trails and the burst of color from the many flowering trees throughout the city. We’ll be back.