Vancouver Island suggestions

Going to Vancouver Island for holiday soon, will be there about 10 days.
Already got the first full day planned, plus planning on a visit to Butchart Gardens and a whale watching trip.

Any other suggestions?
Cycling is out of the question as we’ll have my 78 year old mother with us, and she has a dodgy knee.

Staying near Parksville

Victoria is small but lovely the harbour area was great for checking out, getting some food etc. We spent the rest of the time biking so I am not really of any help.

Tour the breweries around the harbour. You can get the little ferry boats between a few of them.

Cathederal Grove, Uclet and Tofino, Depending on the time of year whale watching on a boat trip up the inside passage, Campbell River, Forbidden Plateau Naniamo, all very beautifull places, Graville Island is also very nice and as said above Victoria is very nice. Just avoid Courtnay and Comox (Oh wait thas a personal no MIL lives there) 🙂

Bear in mind the Island is about the size of England so things will probably be further apart than you realise

Monty’s in Victoria?

Get yourself to Tofino. Super chilled, and the brewery is pretty good as well.

Brewery tours sound good but I’ll be driving…

Thanks for the suggestions

Can recommend Eagle Wing tours for the whale watching.

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We also went on a bear watching trip from Tofino which was also great

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What time of year are you going? Later in the year we were told of a great spot to see salmon leaping up stream on the way home from Tofino

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Tofino is great, but I went in November and it was pretty quiet – might be packed in summer. Generally anywhere around the forests and coast is pretty special – we saw bears, salmon, eagles, whales etc just while we were wandering about. If you’re going to take the trip down to Victoria then Goldstream park and Sooke potholes and the nearby coast are two lovely areas with flat walks and good paths for old hips. I sat watching the sunset at Sooke and saw seals, sea lions, porpoises and loads of seabirds and otters splashing around in the river at the potholes.

There’s usually good car parking and access at most sites of interest so you hopefully won’t have any problems with your mother.

Would also echo what others have said about the driving distances. If you have the pennies, there are some seaplane routes that can skip long drives and offer some great views. Still, you’re reasonably central where you’re based.

You could walk the West Coast Trail, but you’d need to book long in advance and it takes about five days. Alternatively walk in from the northern trailhead, camp and walk back out. The scenery is amazing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Trail

There’s a fantastic museum in Victoria, well worth a visit especially for the exhibits on native American tribes. It will rain for at least one day so keep this in mind:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_British_Columbia_Museum

Will second Eagle Wing Tours.
If you go on the trip with their Goldwing boat they cover a big area on the trip and will try and get to see both humpbacks before heading out to where the Orcas are.

Great stuff, thanks everyone

If in Nanaimo, get the ferry across to Newcastle Island. It is a really nice walk around, then you can walk to Protection Island at low tide and head to the Dinghy dock pub for some nice beers and food. I prize my dinghy dock pint glass at home still.

Just for the novelty factor, see if you can get to goat on the roof market.

Goat on the roof market is already on the plan 🙂

Going in June

Does everything have to be 78 year old compatible?

If not some sea kayaking would be high on my list even if only for a few hours.

As already said, Tofino is nice. We went on a whale watching and bear watching trip from there, and on a small single prop sea plane, I was sat next to the pilot! Victoria is also nice for a walk round.
Trevor.

If you can sneak out for a surf at Tofino, do it 🙂

The squelchy hike to to the abandoned WW2 plane is good if you’re feeling adventurous and have got your wellies!

https://www.tofinohiking.com/hikes/canso-plane-crash-site/

Possibly the world’s finest tacos available at the Tacofino van.

There’s also a cracking little Japanese place called Kuma.

http://www.kumatofino.com/menu/

I don’t swim so surfing kayaking etc are out of the question 🙁

No, not everything has to be suitable for my mum, but we’d like to include her in as much as possible otherwise we may as well leave her at home
(besides, at 52 my own knees aren’t getting any better!)

Just back home after our trip to Canada.
We ended up flying over to Victoria Thursday for a whale watching trip.
It ended up being the 1 day out of 2 weeks with bad weather but wanted to say don’t let rain put you off such a trip.

Bit late to the party but would definitely recommend trying to fit in a day or two at Knight Inlet Lodge. Its a remote floating lodge accessible by seaplane. Absolutely beautiful setting. Really friendly staff and amazing food. Their main business is bear watching tours.

Well we did a whale & marine safari out if Campbell River. Excellent. One humpback whale, several dozen sea lions and harbour seals, and more bald eagles than you can shake a stick at.
Also visited Butchart Gardens in Victoria, harbourfront at Nanaimo, wineries around Duncan and lots of arty/crafty places in around Qualicum Beach & Parksville.
Tofino is a good 3hr drive each way so we gave that a miss

I’m jealous of all those orcas doing their thing for you Mikel. Fantastic photos. I got three photos of my humpback 👿

I had my honeymoon in Vancouver about 17 years ago and we stayed in a BnB for a few days on the island. Did Whale watching but saw bigger all 😥 The chap on the boat said they were getting too smart. Off the island I loved a little town called Ladner. Lovely place with some of the kindest people I’ve ever met in my life. Need to go back, amazing.

I think that the canadians are the nicest, kindest people I have ever met. Just waiting for wreckerjnr to get a bit older before we return. I’m hoping the company I work for gets on with their north american expansion sooner rather than later.

Can’t agree more. So polite & friendly. And Canadians seem to me to be generally some of the few people left in the world who still seem to not dislike Britons.
Wish I could live here permanently (still here for a few more hours).

Hire a boat from the east end of Great Central Lake from a guy who used to the drummer in Trooper (watch him air drum for a 4 minutes when a Trooper track comes on the radio and have him tell you when the flash pops went off when they did it live), motor up Great Central Lake, stash the boat, hike towards Della Falls, lose the trail countless times because of deep snow, walk past a couple of decent camp spots and end up running out of flat camping spots apart from a little island in the river with foot of snow on it. Wake up colder than you’ve ever been in your live from sleeping on the snow with only a groundsheet and a jumper under your sleeping bag. Hike, look at falls, glisse a pied like a boss back down again and try not to break your leg a day from help like James nearly did. Have the best and biggest mousaka you’ve ever had in your life at the greek restaurant in town.

The drummer from Trooper might not run the boat shop anymore, but all the rest should be available!

And pick up hitchhikers. Everyone does it, you’ll meet nice people.

the rain and low clouds actually helped us.
Due to the low rain cover our flight to Victoria from Vancouver was flying very low and that let me spot 3 Orcas from the plane.
Our skipper was going to head out towards the open sea but i told him where i had seen the Orcas and he headed that way instead and ended up finding this group of Transients 🙂

On the ferry now back to the mainland at Horseshoe Bay

Nantahala hot springs was all you needed to know. Hang out in Tofino and you’ll find details in a phone booth or suchlike. A first nation guy will pick you up from the pier in his twin 500 tinny and drop you off at the springs. Sit in hot water rock pools while a waterfall of steaming water pummels on to your head and shoulders, the sun sets and phosphorescence glitters in the sea. Candles on the rocks illuminate the steam and you’ll wonder if Kurtz might make an appearance.

Man it was like, awesome

would definitely recommend trying to fit in a day or two at Knight Inlet Lodge. Its a remote floating lodge accessible by seaplane. Absolutely beautiful setting. Really friendly staff and amazing food.

This. + 1 million

Had an amazing 3 days there as part of our honeymoon back in 2002. Kayaking up the inlets to get closer to the bears, eating the crabs you saw them catching the same morning, amazing cookies.

Admittedly, spending a chunk of your honeymoon wearing a survival suit isn’t to everyone’s taste, but I like to think it was good preparation for the last 15 years and 4 days!

thanks for all the ideas folks. Will have to try some of them next time

Sounds like a good trip John. We did a brewery tour in Victoria, managed 6 of the 9 I think before we were all too sloshed to do any more haha. Worth a go if you’re back over there anytime.