Vancouver Island by circuitous road trip
avid fishermen and hikers heading for the epic former shipwreck survivor rescue route, the 47-mile West Coast Trail.
Then the British Columbia government bought the rights to the notoriously rough logging road connecting Port Renfrew with Lake Cowichan. In 2009 that stretch was paved, completing the 180-mile Pacific Marine Circle Route around the southern tip of Vancouver Island.
When I was growing up in B.C., Vancouver Island’s west coast always had a super-size mystique as a remote and lush paradise of hefty salmon and halibut, broad beaches, secret coves offering surfers giant waves, and very tall trees. These days, once-secluded Tofino, a tiny district of fewer than 2,000 people, has become not only accessible but a trendy foodie/ spa destination. Port Renfrew is on its way to becoming the West Coast’s new kid on the block, though it’s still a sleepy village of 200 blinking wide-eyed at the waves of visitors starting to roll in.
Offer people an easier way to get somewhere and they will take it. And that includes me, because I love driving in circles. Especially when the road trip includes British-flavored culture, deserted beaches, brews, bears and gourmet retreats in the least expected locales.
Road trip supplies
I ferry across from Vancouver to Victoria with my cooler-carting, road-trip sage of a sister, Linda. We start at the new harbor-front Robert Bateman Centre, perusing over 100 works by the iconic Canadian painter of critters and landscapes such as those we will soon encounter.
Since this is a coastal drive and we like our adventures to have themes, we decide to focus on seafood, the local microbrews for which Vancouver Island is known, and nautical tunes. For lunch on this steamy day we sit outside on Victoria’s waterfront with gourmet tacos from the Red Fish, Blue Fish kiosk, then fill our cooler with Spinnakers, Canoe and Hoyne’s ales, lagers and porters, bouncing out of Victoria with Great Big Sea’s Newfoundland sea shanties blaring through the speakers.
Thirty minutes later, having cleared Victoria’s suburbs, we can’t resist the inviting 17 Mile House, an 1894 British Tudor-style pub and former stagecoach stop. We shoot pool in the cool, sipping Lighthouse Ale and Beacon IPA.
Just down the road the Sooke visitors center proves worthwhile for its splendid little museum, including a slice of a massive tree outside, its rings marked with historical events revealing it was already 345 years old at the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066.
The adventure quotient of our trip is ramped up when we’re told to top up our tank since the next gas station is 100 miles away at Lake Cowichan.
A short hike leads promptly into wilderness at the Potholes, an idyllic swimming hole. Forgoing the artsy town’s small galleries, we head instead to Sooke Harbour House overlooking Whiffen Spit, an iconic seaside B&B and art gallery, and prowl their maze of hallways and stairways adorned with the best of local and aboriginal art.
Farms, fruit, monsters
Civilization drops away abruptly outside Sooke, replaced by the first of a string of beaches. Winding roads up the lush hillsides hide farms with roadside stands where we stock up with honor-box fruit. Stopping in at Tugwell Creek Honey Farm and Meadery (“From Bee to Bottle”), we sample a surprisingly good range of award-winning honey wines, both sweet and dry. Nearby, a formidable iron gateway adorned with a giant spider in a metal web is open for dropping in on Foggy Mountain Forge, where blacksmithing brothers Marty and Justin Gilbertson create everything from fire pokers to furniture adorned with dragons, demons and monsters.
They tell us the provincial government is buying up seafront land and stitching together small parks to stretch coastal Juan de Fuca Provincial Park all the way to Port Renfrew. We agree that it’s the best government news we’ve heard in ages.
We pass Point No Point Resort, a cluster of restored 1950s waterfront cabins where I once spent a winter weekend storm-watching, dining on creative local seafood in the high perch of their fine-dining restaurant as we were slammed by a dramatic gale. But on this calm day fog pours across the road like heavy cream as we pull into the Sandcut Beach parking lot and hike toward the sea through a lush green tangle of rain forest to the distant sounds of fog horns and gentle surf.
Along the winding seaside route we pick up fresh Dungeness crab, smoked salmon and oysters from roadside crab shacks. By the time we reach sandy China Beach we have assembled a complete picnic lunch to enjoy in sunshine that has burned off the fog. We pop the lid on the cooler and enjoy the distant jagged peaks of the Olympic Peninsula across the strait in