August 9, 2014
Researching the Route
An introduction to adventure is one thing, but you just can't bring younger kids to places where you just think you might find food and/or a place to stay. You have to know . So on Monday we jumped in our van and crawled every inch of the route. 226 km. The only thing we didn't check was the contents of Aunt Karyn's fridge. Aunt Karyn doesn't quite know it yet - she and Uncle Erhard are our Warm Showers in Victoria.
We were pleasantly surprised to find that McDonald Park, near the Sidney end of the route, is everything we want in a campsite (and coincidentally, so very different from a camping in Europe). There are very secluded walk in sites among the trees, campfire grates, and pit toilets (sorry, Violet). No trailers or RVs (except for one that we did spot), no restaurant, no showers, no beer garden - great!
On the other hand, camping noted on some maps, or Google Maps, was RV only - like Weir's Beach. Grrr. Camping at Thetis Lake exists and they accept tents, but the sites are up a giant hill. Bad for cyclists. And camping found on all maps, that we surely would have counted on - at Sooke Potholes - is now closed. Similarly, camping at Pedder Bay is there, but not for the weekend of Aug 15-17. Who would have known? On the other hand, there is camping just before Sooke and just off the trail - at Sunny Shores.
None of this camping is exactly being given away, even to cyclists. The McDonald (Provincial) Park is $13.70, while the private sites are in the $20-24 range.
As we passed through Victoria, and though this is not a Grampies European tour, we could not ignore at least one bakery. This is the so called Mount Royal bagel bakery. I say "so called" because Mount Royal is a reference to Montreal, the only place to have a "real" bagel bakery. Mount Royal is a pale imitation, but out here, even an imitation of something great can be the best place around. So it is, and that's why we take every opportunity to stock up when we are in the vicinity. A sad story, isn't it.
Also in Victoria, Dodie held out the prospect of finding some ice cream, or "eis" as we learned to call it in Germany. Eis is the most effective cycling food made, unless it is a nut or a "mohn" pastry.
Proceeding to the Sooke (western) end of the route, we verified that we could camp at Sunny Shores RV. They had a little store, stocking mostly fishing supplies. But, there were a few food items on the shelves. Surprisingly, among these were cans of mohn, the key ingredient in some of our favourite pastries. Last year we went to the trouble of carry several pouches of this back from Germany. Who would have known that it could be found at a campsite in Sooke!
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It was good that Sunny Shores would be available, because we found out that the camping at the Sooke Potholes - our ultimate destination - is closed. Apparently the Land Conservancy (TLC) which owned and operated it in in financial distress, and claims they can not afford to keep it open. It was a no services campground, with a cyclist section, apparently. Checking the internet shows a lot of outrage among TLC members and the local public, but that, of course, does not help us.
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