“Slow Food” bike tour in Pemberton, B.C.

Sample locally-grown produce and West Coast scenery by bicycle

Slow Food Cycle Sunday is a free one-day tour organized by the community of Pemberton (north of Whistler, Canada) to increase awareness and appreciation of their growers and suppliers. This year more than 2100 cyclists cycled the 50 kilometers of country roadway that linked 12 participating farms.

View photos of Slow Food Cycle Sunday 2008

From the Slow Food Cycle Sunday web site:

“The World Watch Institute reports that the average food item eaten in North America has traveled 2500-4000 km from farm table. The distance between good food and your table is as short as a 26km bike ride.

Sea to Sky’s signature agritourism event, Slow Food Cycle Sunday Pemberton blows the fast-food drive-through away. A pedal-powered trip through the natural buffet that is Pemberton Meadows farmland, to meet local growers and sample produce fresh from the field.

Next year’s event is scheduled for August 16, 2009.

Interior slopes offer fun on or off skis

Four B.C. resorts serve up inventive programs for family fun in the snow

Chris Keam is a single parent who’d like to introduce his daughter to the joys of skiing—gently. “I’d really just play it by ear and see how she is responding to it,” the Vancouver video editor says. “If it wasn’t going well, I’d probably want to explore other things too…like tobogganing, which is easier with a five-year-old than skiing all day, every day.”

Four ski destinations in B.C.’s Interior have just the thing. Sun Peaks Resort (near Kamloops), Silver Star Mountain Resort (near Vernon), Big White Ski Resort (near Kelowna), and Apex Mountain Resort (near Penticton) serve up some very inventive programs that don’t require skis for kids, youth, and grownups.

Merridale Cidery in Cobble Hill, Vancouver Island

Family-run apple orchard grows, squishes, ferments and pours their own ciders

Terry and I were waiting on the corner of Granville and Broadway for the #601 bus to take us to the Tsawwassen ferry terminal, when a grey pony-tailed fellow in mirrored sunglasses rode up on a blue ten-speed with two shopping bags hanging from the handlebars. He said he was going to Jamaica.

“How are you going to get to Jamaica once you’ve run out of land?” I asked him, motioning to his bike. He looked at me hard. “What are you, writing a book?”

“Er, no,” I back-pedaled, “I was just wondering in case I want to try it myself.”

Our journey ’s motivation was much simpler: we’d take our bikes on the ferry to Vancouver Island, cross the Saanich Peninsula, jump on the Mill Bay ferry, and cycle the rolling hills and smooth blacktop around Cobble Hill’s Merridale Cidery.

The family-run cidery grows apples, cultivates honey, and squishes the two together to make a sweet, hi-test cider called Cyser. I wanted some, and I figured it was worth a weekend of camping and riding to get it.

A Two-Wheel Odyssey to a Table by the Sea

Ulysses can attest that sometimes the longest journey begins with a single malt. Not long after they set out on their fabled odyssey, Ulysses and his crew found themselves lingering in the land of the lotus-eaters for spirits and nosh by the sun-warmed sea.

It kind of sounds like patio season on the sea wall, doesn’t it? Like Ulysses, you set out with the best of intentions: your bike is tuned and you’re determined to ride hard, but the cafés, by God, the outdoor cafés! Their breeze-blown tablecloths, tinkling glasses, and promises of sublime indolence make them nearly impossible to just…ride…past.

Fortunately, you don’t have to. The solution to combining hard-core and Hefeweizen is literally attached to our familiar Seaside pathway signs. It’s a stylized maple-leaf symbol indicating that by merely getting on your bike and pedalling a few bite-size kilometres, you are cycling the Trans Canada Trail, a 17,000-plus-kilometre, coast-to-coast recreational trail soon to be the world’s longest. The Vancouver section happens to include a smorgasbord of roll-in café patios that are entirely free of traffic and blessed with views of the North Shore mountains, the Pacific Ocean, and the Gulf Islands.