The magazine of outdoor recreation and adventure on Vancouver Island and coastal British Columbia
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The magazine of outdoor recreation and adventure on Vancouver Island and coastal British Columbia |
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  Features on the pop-up map correspond to items in the Essential Vancouver Island Outdoor Recreation Guide. |
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Victoria is widely accepted as one of Canada 's most beautiful cities, famous for its mild year-round climate, picturesque waterfront and harbour, stately Victorian architecture and a laid-back West Coast atmosphere. About a million visitors a year flock to the downtown to shop the boutiques, sip lattés at sidewalk cafés and stroll the waterfront promenade. There are a thousand ways to be parted from your money, whether it's a ride on a horse-drawn carriage in front of the stately legislature building, high tea at the Empress Hotel or a walk through the ornate flowerbeds of Butchart Gardens. In the larger picture, however, Victoria is suffering the same pains of most other major cities: growing residential urban sprawl, rush-hour traffic gridlock and endless cookie-cutter strip malls designed for automobiles. Most people will likely see it as a place to escape rather than to seek out wilderness. However, it wasn't long ago that Greater Victoria was a forest of huge Douglas-fir trees and meadows filled with twisted Garry oak. Vestiges of this former glorious wilderness still exist, with large tracts of the best remaining examples now protected as regional or provincial parks, such as Gowlland-Tod or John Dean. Locals looking for a quick outing or tourists with only a short time to spend in the city will find no lack of places to stretch the legs, as an extensive corridor of green areas crosses Saanich Peninsula. Cyclists will find extra reason to love Victoria , whether it's commuting along the Galloping Goose Regional Trail or hitting the mountain bike trails at Mount Work Regional Park.
- Excerpt from The Essential Vancouver Island Outdoor Recreation Guide, by John Kimantas, Whitecap, 2008
Visit Greater Victoria's communities:
Sidney: The perfect setting Where else but the town of Sidney could a traffic jam be caused by a pod of passing killer whales? / Spring 08
Recommended services:
Watch this space as our site grows.
Recommended places to explore: Sightseeing: The view atop Mount Douglas in Mount Douglas Regional Park.
Mountain biking: The official trails in Mount Work Regional Park.
Hiking: The trails to Jocelyn Hill in Gowlland Tod Provincial Park.
Kayaking: Discovery Island Provincial Marine Park and nearby islands.
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