October 22, 2019
Day 3: Ganges to Fulford to Port Browning (Pender Island)
This wonderful day began with a slight off note - trivial to most, significant to us. It was Art Birkmeyer who first spotted it, and added a comment yesterday. That giant container of maple syrup was a scam. Despite the New Brunswick origin and the name Steeves Maple, since 1889!, the main ingredient turned out to be sugar water. Art was right in his comment - a hungry cyclist will eat anything!
Despite our brave approach to rain and cold, today's claim to wonderfulness was built on its delivering a bit of sun and a bit of warmth (if 13 degrees is warmth!). Our plan for hopping the islands is to arrive one day and find our accommodation. Then we will cycle on the island the next day, sleep at the same spot, and leave the following day. So today is our day to leave Saltspring. But since ferries generally leave at around 3, we still had lots of time for a cycle.
We headed out the south end of Ganges, up the famous (famous because all locals think to warn us of it) big hill, and toward Fulford Harbour. There are basically two roads to Fulford, so naturally we would leave on one and return on the other.
The road we took down first passes some vineyards. Like all the other foliage, the leaves of the vines have turned to brilliant colours. Normally they seem to be yellow, but some were bright red.
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5 years ago
The south of the island features several quite big mountains, one of which we normally see from our house, across the water.
While mountains might seem daunting for the cyclist, they also (by definition) also offer valleys. And that's where you sneak through! In the case of our road, you are led through the Burgoyne Valley, a beautiful passage at the foot of Mount Bruce. Heading toward Fulford Harbour as we were, the valley slanted downward - making for a glorious glide through the vibrant scenery.
The area also seems to feature a number of churches - mostly Anglican, but one Catholic. Typically they were built in the late 1880's and are small wooden structures. So of course we are not talking about ancient stone cathedrals. Still, it was interesting to look at them, and to walk through the graveyards. As always, these include the sad markers for very young children. We also spotted some Canadian military stones, not surprisingly exactly like those that can be seen in France. Some dates we to be expected, like 1915 and 1940, but one was a puzzling 1935.
Much sooner than we anticipated, the waters of Fulford Harbour appeared before us. The harbour is very long and sheltered, and on this calm and fairly bright day, it was beautiful.
We cycled around and down to the ferry terminal, where three "bakeries" sit, together with one souvenir shop. We took a seat outside "Saltspring Mercantile" and enjoyed the last of yesterday's oily muffins, while writing postcards. The baked goods generally on offer here looked pretty good, but then we were already backlogged with muffin!
In the store we spotted other local products, like the quite famous Salt Spring Island goat cheese, and some exotic items, like bananas. The bananas put me in mind of the banana price index, developed by dynamic cyclists Glen and Shiela Ord over their many journeys. Pretty much the most costly would be 2 per US dollar, in Alaska, and then one could find 42 per US dollar, such as in Vietnam. Fulford Harbour comes in at 1.67 bananas per US dollar, making this place more remote than Alaska, bananawise!
Perhaps we could take that up with our new Liberal government, under the voting results you see announced in the paper on sale at Fulford. Actually that appeal would not get too far, since the local winner is the leader of the Green Party, Elizabeth May. Elizabeth would no doubt advise to forget the shipped in fruit and to stick to local apples. I neglected to check the apple price!
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5 years ago
We headed back toward Ganges along the more easterly, and quieter, Beddis Road. Instead of valley views, this did give some peeks at the water. By the road we found mushrooms, no doubt encouraged by the recent rains. These of course were Fly agaric. Fly agaric is psychoactive, but it is not the psilocybin containing "Magic Mushroom" that this region is better known for. Oh well, we left these, and any others, for locals who know what they are doing.
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Cheers,
Keith
5 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_muscaria
Nice photo!
5 years ago
When we finally rolled back into Ganges, we got a view that might serve for showing what Ganges, overall, is like. Somehow Ganges had eluded such a shot for us to this point.
We carried on back to our last night's hotel, and found a table where we could eat our lunch. This was composed of things we had bought yesterday at the grocery, plus perversely some items salvaged from the hotel's very own breakfast.
That was about it for our time on Saltspring, so we pedaled off toward Long Harbour, and our ferry to Pender Island. The waterside road featured some quite upscale houses, often with modernistic or special designs. Here is one fairly standard one:
We were surprised to find that the ferry is a very large and fancy boat - the Salish Orca. It is large (and fancy) because after stopping at Pender and Mayne Islands, it heads over to Vancouver.
Waiting for the trip to Vancouver we found a cyclist from Netherlands, who was just finishing a couple of months cycling in Alberta and BC. Ready for her flight out tomorrow, she had somehow located a bike box, and had this lashed to the rear of her ride. The cyclist had been given a lift here in a VW van by her Warmshowers hostess, out of Courtenay, on Vancouver Island. That was a generous gesture. The warm showers lady said she had been a Warm Showers host for twenty (or was it thirty?) years.
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The crew ushered us on board first, and it almost looked like the Orca was our private yacht. In fact, at Pender only us and one walker got off. Dodie joked with the crew that is was nice of them to stop here, just for us. They laughed, but we soon saw that on shore there were scads of cars all waiting to board and presumably head for the bright lights of the big city.
For us, the motivation was the reverse, and we soon appreciated the very much quieter roads and ambiance, compared to Saltspring.
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There is very little to see or do near the ferry landing at Otter Bay, so our immediate chore was to cut across the island, to the "bustling centre" near Port Browning. Actually, we do not mean to dismiss the centre, which is actually called the Driftwood Centre. Here we found a nice grocery store, a cafe, a bakery, and lots more.
Just a few minutes away, down by the water, was our spot for the next two nights - the Nosy Point B&B. This is a beautifully restored house, with a million dollar view. In fact, I acknowledged to the owner, Steve, that this was probably a multi-million dollar view.
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Steve has owned the place for four years, and we could see he has been working on it non-stop for all that time. The house itself was originally moved here from Victoria, and Steve mentioned that it was originally built at the end of the nineteenth century. Since we ourselves had a house from that era in Victoria, we enjoyed chatting about some of the typical features - like fir floors, and of course windows that all needed replacing.
We are the only couple here (from a total capacity of two!) but are taking care not only not to make noise but also not to wreck any of the fittings and furnishings, or to make too much of the inevitable cyclist's mess.
For tomorrow we are looking forward to cycling this quiet and beautiful island, not to mention hitting the Driftwood Centre for some advanced excitement!
Today's ride: 47 km (29 miles)
Total: 120 km (75 miles)
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5 years ago
5 years ago