The answer of course is yes and no. The blog subtitle mentioned the temperate rain forest and the Salish Sea. Here there is no doubt. The rain forest is a world phenomenon, and the Salish Sea - between Vancouver Island and the mainland - is a gorgeous thing filled with islands and a vast amount of wild life. This time our ride only bounced off a few points of these two huge natural features. Even the Andersons, who delved deeper in to the forest, only got a small sense of it. Look at our track in relation to the whole of the island:

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At the very least we could have circled around by Port Renfrew and back to Lake Cowichan, and we could have kept going north, to Campbell River. And with the Salish Sea, we could have hit more than one Gulf Island, and heavens, we could have gone to the Salish Sea aquarium in Sidney, just across from our motel there.

There are really two questions in this. Is this a world class destination for its forest and sea, and did our tour do it justice? I think the answer for this is yes, and yes. There was a lot more that we did not do, but still we did see and do an awful lot in the eight days.

But there is more to it.  Was the cycling infrastructure world class? How about the food, the bakeries, and the accommodation? Were the drivers polite? How was the traffic? Was there any inspiring architecture? How about historical sites?

That's where the yes and no comes in. Quickly addressing the questions above, we'd say the cycling infrastructure was so so. They are working on it, but there are no really long well signed routes. The Cowichan Valley Trail is close, as is the Lochside Trail/Galloping Goose..

The food and bakeries? Again, there is some good stuff, but would you buy a plane ticket to come sample it? Nah.

Accommodation? Two of our motel rooms were triple the size of most things in Europe, and they featured fridge, microwave, coffee maker, stove, two queen beds, fast internet, cable TV, and so forth. But they were also costly and lacked really fluffy quilts or great breakfasts, or any breakfasts. So no gold star there. Silver star, maybe.

Drivers and traffic? Drivers were not out to kill us - probably they scarcely noticed us on average.  Traffic increased toward the mid-Island, and when the so so cycle infrastructure put us in the middle of it, it was a bug.

Architecture? No. You usually need centuries to develop a  winning mass of interesting buildings. BC has been receiving settlers of maybe 200 years, and they did not build much of note. Before that the indigenous people had 10,000 years to throw up  a cathedral or something, but, nah.

And historical sites? Actually the province is quite good at documenting historical places and events. It was a lot of fun reading the many plaques. So let's give it a tick on that.

Overall score - on our tour - not bad really. We enjoyed almost all its various points. And there were a lot of comments from readers.  On the larger question - would people from the world at large be happy with a cycle tour here, given that they have to pay airfares to get started. Yes, we think so, especially given the scope for a tour of perhaps three times the length we did, using the what there is of acceptable roads and paths to go farther north and farther west.

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