August 22, 2016
Day 1 - Saanich to Lake Cowichan: Some Serendipitous Encounters
The night before our first day, we arrived at the home of our good friends Bill and Carolyn Watt for a lovely dinner. Our children grew up together and we have missed them since they moved to the Island last year. It was great to catch up, and their house is perfectly situated for us to leave our car while we made our tour of Vancouver Island's Marine Circle. Having had a great sleep, we got up at 6:00, thinking to catch the first ferry from Brentwood Bay to Mill Bay at 7:30 am.
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Due to a slight miscue on our part, we ended up overshooting our destination and missing the ferry by 3 minutes. However this lead to our first serendipitous encounter of the day.
Along came Pat, who was waiting for a group of fellow riders out for a morning training ride. It turns out that they all ride with a group called Victoria Grandmothers 4 Africa. It is part of the Stephen Lewis foundation and they raise funds to help with the Aids crisis in Africa. I know another group of grannies doing this type of work, so we were excited to hear about their ride. This September 9 - 11, 30 or so riders (all women over 55!) will be riding from Campbell River to Victoria to raise funds for this organization - 275 km over 3 days. I am pretty impressed with their enthusiasm and who knows, maybe I'll join them in a year or two!
Once on the other side, it was a quick ride to Mill Bay where we stopped for some refreshments and groceries for the day.
It was then off to ride up to Shawinigan Lake and then a longer ride to Lake Cowichan. We originally had planned to ride on the road all the way up, and I was a little concerned, as this is a narrow winding road and people tend to drive fast. Also, I had been warned that the road up above the Kinsol Trestle was gravel with lots of washboard. As we came to the cut-off for the trestle, we had our second bit of serendipity of the day. A couple was just coming along so we rode with them for a bit. They told us where we could stop to eat our lunch by the trestle. While chatting, they mentioned that the Trans Canada Trail went all the way up to Lake Cowichan from the Kinsol Trestle, and that while it was pretty rough in a few spots, it would keep us off the main road the whole way up! Well, this sounded like a great idea, so we thanked them for the information and headed up the trail, finding some interesting artifacts along the way.
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The trail did have a few challenging sections, but the grade, being an old rail trail, was never an issue. There were a couple of sections where we had to get off and push the bikes through some mud, and further up, the trail became more of a deer track than an actual riding trail.
At long last, we made it to our destination for the night - Lake Cowichan. As we were stopped trying to figure out where to find a) food b) beer and c) our campsite, we met a couple of guys also touring. They had just come from where we were headed, so were able to give us some information about what to expect on the road tomorrow. As well, they pointed us to the nearest grocery store and were headed to the same campground! Great! Now all we had to do was pick up something easy for dinner, grab a couple of cold beers from the liquor store next to the grocery store and find our spot at the campground. As we had made a reservation before hand, we were no where near our buddies and, of course, had to push the bikes up a hill to get to our camp spot. However, it was secluded and quiet - a perfect location for our first night of camping as we were both exhausted by then.
First day stats: distance - 74 km; riding time - 5 1/2 hours; total day spent - 11 hours!; avg speed - 13.5 km/hr; top speed - 49.5 km/hr
Today's ride: 74 km (46 miles)
Total: 74 km (46 miles)
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