Tom Otley gets on his bike for a cycling tour of the scenic Canadian city.
There’s a lot to be said for exploring cities on foot – you have time to absorb different neighbourhoods, pop into shops and stop by out-of-the-way cafés. But you need time to cover a city, and often you can end up footsore at the end of it.
For a quick trip around a place, a bicycle has a lot to commend it, particularly in a city such as Vancouver which, in recent years, and particularly as a result of the 2010 Winter Olympics, has undergone a Damascene conversion to two wheels.
There are miles and miles of purpose-built cycling paths, some shared with pedestrians, many reserved for bikers. Even when you join substantial arterial routes – across, for instance, the road bridges linking Downtown to Vanier Park – they are safe and pleasant to cycle. In addition, it has natural advantages, not least the fabulous views and flat central area – no nasty hills to test your possibly jet-lagged body.
The most popular route is around Stanley Park, a 400-hectare natural reserve that is the highlight of any visit to the city, but one that, on foot, you could explore only a tiny part of in four hours (the perimeter path is 10.5km long). Several companies organise cycling trips and as we had a whole afternoon spare before our flight home, we chose the “Grand Tour”, a 4.5-hour comprehensive journey with stops at Stanley Park, Granville Island, Chinatown and Gastown.
I commute to London every day by bike, and was expecting this to be an American-style “adventure”, with lots of “comfort breaks”, a sedate pace and health and safety emphasised every few hundred yards. In fact, we picked up our bikes at the cycle shop, met Ben, our guide, signed a standard disclaimer form, put on our helmets and were off.
Our first stop was a couple of minutes later by the romantically named Lost Lagoon. As Ben made adjustments to our bikes – saddles up and down, tweaks to the gears – he told us that Stanley Park was originally an island and the Lost Lagoon had been a mudflat that flooded with each high tide. Land reclamation has changed the landscape in this area, as we would see on the next part of the ride in which we alternated between the seawall perimeter and the trails, with some fairly steep sudden climbs.
There were frequent stops, first at Brockton Point to see the totem poles, then Beaver Lake, which is covered in water lilies and slowly transforming into marshland as a result. Having a knowledgeable guide was invaluable, and Ben explained how the inland lake was gradually disappearing owing to silting and vegetation. He also told us about the beavers living there, showing us the damage they had caused to trees around the water.
Flora and fauna played a big part on the tour. We saw extremely old redwood trees, despite logging in the 19th century and storms in 2006 having caused damage among the cedar, Douglas firs and spruce. Ben also pointed out how the forest was recovering, with ground cover already in place.
It wasn’t all National Geographic, though. There was plenty of amusing history, such as the drunk Welshman who was first in charge of the lighthouse at Prospect Point overlooking Burrard Inlet, and stories from Deadman’s Island which, as well as being a cemetery, was where boats were quarantined against smallpox.
Stanley Park has a number of beaches – imaginatively named First Beach (also known as English Bay), Second Beach and Third Beach – and as we neared the end of the first part of the tour, we crossed False Creek by the Burrard Bridge (built in 1932), which provided great views back to the West End of Vancouver and out to English Bay Beach. The bridge crossing felt safe because a few years back one of its traffic lanes was set aside for bike riders, and a concrete barrier was put in place to separate them from the cars.
Stopping en route, Ben told us that the art deco design – which was apparent in the balustrade – was not only intended to echo the fledgling art form of the cinema reel but had its individual balusters spaced out in such a way that those passing over the bridge could still appreciate the views beyond.
The advantage of seeing Vancouver by bike was becoming apparent, as next we headed into Vanier Park, riding past the Museum of Vancouver, the MacMillan Space Centre and the Maritime Museum, before heading back under the bridge, stopping only to see a bald eagle nesting in a tree. I’d read about all these places in my guidebook, but would never have seen them without the bike ride.
We then made our way to Granville Island, where some of the party went shopping while I had a 12oz beer (the maximum allowed at the venue because of licensing laws) in the Granville Island Brewery. From there it was time to head back, tracing the south side of False Creek with the housing used for the Olympics located to our right and, across the water, the buildings for the 1986 World Expo and flags indicating the United Nations Plaza and the glass-walled Edgewater Casino.
A final push around the eastern end of False Creek saw us cycling home through the edge of the Dr Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden and into Gastown, which is the main tourist area and best explored at night for its restaurants and bars. From there it was back to the waterfront all the way to Stanley Park and the end of our tour, as the shadows lengthened. On our flight that evening, we had a healthy Canadian glow and lots of new impressions of Vancouver. It was the highlight of a fabulous few days in the city.
- A four and a half-hour biking tour of Stanley Park, Granville Island, Chinatown and Gastown is CA$85 (£55) per person. Contact Josh Bloomfield: tel +1 604 618 8626; cyclevancouver.com
- Visit businesstraveller.com/city-guides/vancouver for a Four Hour Guide.
