A Long, Straight Walk On The Cowichan Valley ‘Rail Trail’

The weather looked a little iffy on Thursday morning but by 10am the sun had broken through the overcast. Thinking it might not remain that way, Paulette and I decided to take Rylie for a walk right away rather than wait until the afternoon. It turned out to be a good decision as we ended up with sunshine for the entire 2 hours we were out on our hike. Our initial plan was to head out to one of our old standby’s the Glenora section of the Cowichan River Park.  But, we drove right past that exit.

The Rail Trail used to be an old railway track and leads to the Kinsol Trestle

Instead, we drove a few miles past until we found the entrance to another section of the Cowichan Valley Trail that connects Glenora Park to the Kinsol Trestle.  As I understand this is commonly called the Rail Trail. After spending an 90 minutes on this hike I can see why it’s called that – it’s as straight as an arrow and flat as a pancake! A sign told us it was a 15km hike to the Kinsol Trestle!

These natural canopy’s of trees growing over the trail seemed like a tunnel

We definitely weren’t prepared for a 30km return trip on foot yesterday morning but we did put a pretty good dent in the trail by walking approximately 7km towards the Trestle before turning around an heading back – all flat and all straight! Still, we did see an incredibly diverse amount of beautiful scenery along the way including tree canopy’s that made it seem like we were walking through a tunnel, farms and even a bit of a swamp that was pretty dried out because of the long, hot summer.

Even though it’s almost October the trees still have most of there leaves but the Maple Trees are definitely beginning to fall. It won’t be long now before most of our trails are completely covered with them.

Even though this trail was flat with no increase in elevation we kept up a pretty brisk pace so we both got a good workout. It felt like a perfect fall day with lots of sunshine but just cool enough to make it quite comfortable.

We didn’t run across any other hikers yesterday but we did see a few people pedaling by us in their bikes. I have to say as we neared the turn around point the bike option looked pretty attractive. It sure is a perfect trail for riding a bike and you can ride this trail from Glenora all the way to and over the Kinsol Trail then on to Shawnigan Lake south of Cowichan Bay.

Looks like someone is planning a Wedding Venue out in the boonies!

The strangest sight we saw all day was the above Wedding Venue being built way out in the middle of nowhere. I suppose there’s a road into the site but even so it’s still way out in the boonies!  It’s a beautiful spot though and who knows?  We were back home just after 1pm and spent a very relaxing afternoon.

In July, 2013 I photoshopped a bear we saw because I was too slow

Back in July, 2013 in a blog titled Our First Bear Sighting… I wrote about how we saw a big black bear walk right across our path. I was too slow to get my camera out and missed the shot. So, I simply photoshopped a bear in to show how close it actually was. Thursday evening I received a message from Lorraine, a local who must read my blog, giving us a warning:

Trust me it's still there. The bear is very big. It walked in front of our vehicle a few feet away. I was just getting out with our four happy little dogs. I got back in the car quickly. We sighted the bear Sunday 21st September.

Thanks for the heads up Lorraine. I’ll keep my eyes open and my camera ready!

Thanks for visiting!