Sunday Spit

A relaxing, typical Sunday, down to the spit in the early afternoon then onto the Prestige for some happy hour beers. It was a warm day and there was a lot of activity down near the water, many dogs, duck's bottoms and a bonus river otter!

Todd Creek Trestle

The Vancouver Island section of the Canadian National Railway opened in 1911, and it was all about the big trees. Trees had to be cleared for the right of way, ties were cut from the forest, as were the massive beams required to build the many bridges along the route. The Todd Creek Trestle was one such timber bridge that made it possible to navigate through a near-impenetrable, rocky, hilly, forested landscape.

It is now one of the major features on the Galloping Goose trail.

The height was reported as 26 meters, and Karen was having a little concern about that but said that it was more tolerable than the Capilano suspension bridge. The trestle was at the end of our outward and upward journey, so it was the halfway point of the walk back to the car park for a total of seven kilometers.

The Two Trestles

It was a fantastic walk, fantastic. This is the exciting thing about exploring new places and we had no idea what the walk would be like, temperature was perfect, overcast but dry and we started a three and a half kilometer light ascent from the car park to the two bridges, the first is called Charters Trestle and the second, Todd Trestle.

Charters Trestle.

The Quest - Continued

The Galloping Goose trail called out our names again on Friday, so we picked an exciting piece a few minutes away from our house and put on our walking shoes and parked up.

Once again, for some odd reason, the "You Are Here" comment on the notice board was correct and we both wondered how it knew?

Off we went towards the two trestles.

The Olympics

A grayscale panorama of the Olympics from Esquimalt Lagoon, click on it for full screen.

Wisdom Line

A ship from the Wisdom Line dominated the horizon while we were at the lagoon, we wondered what it was delivering.

Albert Head Lagoon

Tuesday, Valentines day, the good weather continued and we set off for Colwood and some of the local areas, one being the Albert Head Lagoon which is a wildlife sanctuary and a refuge for many types of migrating birds.

In addition to cormorants, eagles, hummingbirds and common seagulls, a kingfisher sounded quite irritated at the pair of us invading it's territory, regardless, it provided an acrobatic dive into the nearby lagoon and then rested on some nearby driftwood before taking off in a huff.

Canada Geese

A few days later, a nice afternoon walk down at Whiffen Spit and the day was rather warm, in fact we both felt overdressed as we watched a bunch of sea lions and seals playing about in the water, it saddens me that I can never grab a decent photograph of them as they are always ever so slightly out of zoom range.

A passing flock of Canada Geese made up for that.

Snooke and Snow

The whole of British Columbia has had more than a dusting of the white stuff this season, here in Sooke on February 6th we had quite a bit more, and a day or so later, it was all gone as the temperature rocketed up to ten degrees with a so called "Pineapple Express".

Today's Bit

Another slice of the Galloping Goose today. In the last week we've completed the bit between the two red circles and today we will drive to the Gillespie Road car park and will walk the 2 km piece (and back) between the blue circles.

After that relatively short 4 km walk, we will go to 17 Mile House for a rather yummy lunch.

Looks the same from both ends

The small stretch of the Galloping Goose Trail looked very similar at this end on Monday, when we walked the 3.7 km down from Roche Cove through to Matheson Lake and then turned around and walked all the way back for a total of 7.4 km. I think the pair of us agreed that we were going lame by the end of it.

To keep some sort of tally, we have walked a total of 10.2 km so far, only half of which counts.

Roche Cove

The beginning of the Monday trek at Roche Cove.

The First Big Bit

We achieved what we set out to on Monday, zippering up the 1.4 km piece with the 3.7 km piece for a total of around 5.1 km of the Galloping Goose trail. There are two trails that we aim to complete in small chunks, the Goose and a second trail that will take us to Sidney, the second is called the Lochside Regional trail and runs from North of Victoria.