Words & Photos Stephanie Staples
It’s fun to do things once a year! It may give you something to look forward to, something to train for, a reason to connect with friends or even to do something solo. It’s not too frequent, but it’s often enough to be a highlight in your year.
I have a great group of fit and adventurous friends, and for the last few years we have planned a summer overnight excursion that necessitates some serious bakery-powered energy!
Together we’ve done the Kusam Klimb hike, the three-ferry Salt Spring bicycle tour and cycled Mayne Island, and this year we decided to tackle North and South Pender Island by bike. We’ve discovered that even though we can do things faster, we don’t want to! Taking our time by adding an overnight stay turns it into more of a girl’s getaway rather than a muscle-through event.
We take turns planning, booking and suggesting our trips and, most importantly, we’re very skilled at going with the flow, which makes everything more pleasant!
We took the very reasonable 8:30 a.m. ferry to Pender – a 42-minute jaunt that landed us at Otter Bay on North Pender with plenty of time to meander and get a little lost – which we typically do.
Though there is not a huge ask as far as the number of kilometres go, don’t let that fool you as Pender is very hilly. In fact, most people we encountered were smiling up the hills on their e-bikes and I felt like we got more than a couple nods of respect for plowing up these hills strictly on our “me-powered” bikes! Add an afternoon of unpredicted rain and wow, I’d pretty much call us heroes!
We managed to squeeze in much of the Island, including: wonderful views at Port Washington, Hope Bay for the great art gallery and Pender Chocolates, the very interesting and educational Pender Islands Museum, Port Browning’s Driftwood Centre with shops and a bakery, and fabulous views throughout the trip.
We stayed at Poet’s Cove on South Pender, arriving like four drowned rats. The hot tub, our rooms with fireplaces and chow at Syrens Bistro & Lounge were very welcome, indeed. That evening we solved the problem of relatively small rooms by entertaining more than a few folks while playing charades
in the cozy lobby.
By morning we, and our gear, were nice and dry and the weather gods were in our favour, so off we went up, up, up and down, down, down to Gowlland Point where we summoned the whales,
to no avail.
Aside from being with some really stellar humans, challenging my body with those hills and seeing some incredible vistas, the highlight for me was Southridge Farms Country Store and Picnic Park. This little gem may ask you to take a slight detour, but it’s well worth it – the store carries a very unique variety of groceries and many handmade products made by co-owner Amanda, who is a professionally trained chef. Add to that a delicious food truck and, most importantly to us, the community-focused games and picnic area. Co-owner Rob encouraged us to linger and play and boy we did play – I think we spent over 90 minutes there (pre-rain) playing giant Jenga, Connect Four, ping pong, tetherball and cornhole – there were so many games we didn’t even make a dent in them, but we sure did laugh a lot!
We hopped on the 3 p.m. ferry back to Schwartz Bay, rounding out our mini-vacay full of memories, a little sore and mostly pretty proud that we explored Pender with our own pedal power. However you choose to visit Pender, it will be time well spent!
