Lochside - to Swartz Bay

The Temple of Literature - Munro's Books

My room was quieter and cooler that night, and I slept well after riding the Galloping Goose. In the morning, after coffee and another large helping of Nutella and jam on toast, I checked out early and set out to explore the city of Victoria a little more. After Craigdarroch Castle, the place I wanted to see was Munro's Books, founded more than fifty years ago by Alice Munro and her husband James. Alice Munro is an Ontario native, and is said to have hated living on Vancouver Island. After divorcing her husband she returned to Ontario, and went on to become a Nobel Prize-winning novelist and short-story writer. Munro's Books (the store) has been called "the most magnificent bookstore in Canada." Built in a former Royal Bank of Canada building, it has white marble columns and blue and gold trim outside, and marble walls, dark wood beams, shelves and choir loft inside. It also has a tempting collection of books, but I didn't want to buy heavy things I'd have to carry in my panniers. I was looking for maps, but it seems the store doesn't cater to bicycle tourists.

I also wanted to see the University of Victoria campus, and wandered around looking for it, but apparently there are two Cedar Hills turn-offs and I took the wrong one. I did see a family of three deer grazing on the front lawn of a city house. Finally I came to the Seaside Bike Route, which connects to the Lochside Route, and decided to head out of the city, north to Swartz Bay, where I planned to stay overnight. In the morning I would board a BC Ferry to Tswassen on the mainland, and from there I could ride my bicycle to the US border crossing to Blaine, and then home to Ferndale.

The weather had been grey and drizzly when I rode from Sidney to Victoria, but for the return trip it was sunny, not too warm, not too cool. It was a little confusing covering the same territory again. Things looked a bit different coming the other direction, and I kept expecting to see landmarks I'd passed before. Just about the time I began to think I must be thinking of some place on another ride on some other route, a familiar scene would appear. I stopped for coffee and curly fries at a Farm-to-Table cafe at elevenish and arrived in Sidney a couple of hours later. Swartz Bay is about three miles north-ish and I had a few hours to spare before check-in time at the B&B, so I locked up my bike and walked around town a bit.

References

Sidney has a sort of British seaside retirement/tourist town atmosphere - not that I've ever visited that kind of town, just read about them in novels - and I felt a little awkward strolling around in sweaty Lycra shorts and cycling jersey. After a while I found Tanner's Book Shop on Beacon Ave., where I still felt under-dressed but at least it was my kind of place. The shop doesn't have the elegance and ambiance of Munro's Books, but it does have a nice map section in a cubicle in a back corner. There are road maps and atlases of Canada, navigational maps for boaters, topographical maps for climbers, and at last a bicycle route map for me. It was only for Vancouver Island, so it wouldn't help in finding tomorrow's bike route on the mainland from Tswassen home to Ferndale. But at least I could figure out where I had just been, and use it when I come back.

I also found Mod'n Lavender: Salt Spring Island in the '60's, a personal history of growing up on the island, by John Grain. Salt Spring Island is a largish Gulf island just north of the peninsula containing Swartz Bay and Sidney. When I was growing up, a neighbor boy often talked about his Uncle John's property on Salt Spring, though he never said much about what they did during the summers he spent there. So it was interesting to find this third-party account of what life was like on the island in the psychedelic sixties and seventies.

Even with the map I had trouble finding the way from Sidney to Swartz Bay, and I was getting a little hangry in the last mile or so before I found the B&B. I rode across a highway overpass to a dirt driveway in a weedy, half-landscaped yard. At the end of the drive was a slightly shabby clapboard house, next to a trailer-park General Store, with a bearded storekeeper in overalls, leaning back in a wooden chair on the front porch. Not a promising first impression, but the B&B turned out to be comfortable and welcoming. The proprietor was helpful and friendly, then left me alone to rest and freshen up. My room was plain and simple, with a Shaker-style dresser and bed covered with a pristine white knobbly cotton bedspread. The bathroom was huge and had a kind of sexy stall shower with a curved-glass surround.

When I'd cleaned up I walked back across the overpass, looking for the restaurant nearby. I took a fork in the road on the left and ended up at a truck turn-out where semis waiting to board the ferry parked overnight. A police car followed me down the road so I figured I was going the wrong way and turned back. It was getting to be dusk when I walked down the right fork. The first place I saw was a marina and a little burger place, which was closed. Then, off to the side, under tall, dark fir trees, there was a Tudor cottage with lights glowing in the windows. I walked up the stone steps to a dark but welcoming English pub. They had large tables for families, or groups of sports fans in front of the big screen TV. Not wanting to take up a table all by myself at dinner time, I took a place at the bar.

All summer I had been meaning to try fish tacos, and here they were, on the menu with all the usual pub food. This seemed the perfect occasion. Fish tacos are my new favorite, if I ever find a place that makes them just like these: three white corn tortillas, not too crispy, tough or grainy, filled with just the right combination of fish, slaw, a sprinkle of cheese, a little green salsa.

I am a frugal traveler with simple tastes; for me this evening was a luxurious finish to the summer.