It was the first morning of a two-week experiment into the feasibility of
taking three children, aged eight, three and one, and a sceptical wife on a
big-skies, bear-baiting, backwoods adventure in the magnificent wilderness
of British Columbia’s Vancouver Island. There had been those who had warned
that the whole sorry exercise would end in disaster, but they were wrong. It
began in disaster.
Just three hours ago, I’d collected our 24ft-long motorhome – named Camper Van
Beethoven – and now I’d driven it into a house. Not a big house – more of a
log cabin, really – but let’s not quibble. I’d suffered a brief but critical
moment of accelerator/ brake confusion as we approached the gatehouse of the
lovely Butchart Gardens and, as the startled ticket-seller dived for cover,
I rammed it in an explosion of broken glass and splintered timber.
It looked grim, but this was British Columbia, populated by Canadians, who are
like Americans but far more friendly and who prefer carrying huge cups of
coffee to firearms. As a sympathetic crowd of bystanders gathered to survey
the damage, even the ticket-seller – who would have been calling his
attorney had this been America – was playing down the drama.
Beethoven, with the build quality of a panzer, had suffered minimal damage,
and the wrecked gate lodge, the officials assured me, would be quickly
rebuilt. “No shortage of lumber round here,” grinned a pleasant man in a
jacket saying Incident Control Officer. I signed a form, realising as I did
so that my priority now was to reassure my shaken family that Beethoven and
I could show them a good time. I headed north, where the roads were wider
and the buildings harder to hit.
Day-trippers come to the capital, Victoria, located at the flat, suburban,
southern end of Vancouver Island, to experience twee pleasures such as art
galleries, sweet little ferry boats and fish’n’chip suppers; and if you live
in a land of geological monstrosity characterised by untameable forests,
unscaleable peaks and beasts that can unzip your belly at the flick of a
wrist, it’s easy to see the attraction.
But if you’ve come all the way from the UK, where tweeness is a way of life
and the wildest beast you’re ever likely to encounter is a peeved badger,
Victoria has little to offer. And it’s no place to try to parallel park a
juggernaut like Beethoven, so we attached the bear bells to the children –
designed to prevent unplanned ursine encounters – and Winnebagoed into the
wilderness.
“What’s the bell for, daddy?” asked three-year-old Annabella as we picnicked
on French Beach, staring across the Strait of Juan de Fuca at the
powder-blue mountains of America’s Washington state.
“It’s so the bear knows you’re coming,” I explained. The air smelt of iodine
and pine, and my daughter fixed me with an accusing look. “I don’t want him
to know I’m coming,” she replied, “because then he’ll be waiting to eat me.”
It was a fair point. The bells came off.
Route 19 follows the sheltered east coast northwards, snaking through small
towns and tiny fishing villages where everybody seems to be either a
character from a novel or someone writing one. The chill waters of the
Strait of Georgia are a constant companion, the smoky trails of whale breath
demanding frequent stops to watch and wonder.
In the logging town of Campbell River, the sort of place where the men wear
plaid and the women carry axes, elder son Frederick and I went snorkelling
with salmon (£64 adults, £39 children; www.paradisefound.bc.ca).
Every year, millions of them – chinook, sockeye, pink, coho and chum – swim
upstream from the sea to spawn. The idea is to try to swim against them.
Clad in thick neoprene, we stepped into the river and let the icy current take
us downstream. The odd fish darted past as we tumbled through rapids, and,
although rather fun, it was hardly the struggle against the silvery horde
we’d been promised. Then we saw them: a solid steel wall of fish slogging
upstream with lust in their eyes. Swimming through them was like trying to
run up the down escalator during rush hour while wearing a wetsuit and fins,
and we emerged battered and breathless an hour later, glistening with silver
scales. “Hey, little dude,” panted our guide, slapping my stunned,
fish-whacked son on the back. “Awesome, huh?”
The orcas were awesome, too. A huge pod of 40 entertained us for an entire day
off Telegraph Cove (tours £45pp; www.stubbs-island.com),
but it wasn’t until the end of our first week that I realised what we were
doing wrong. Camper Van Beethoven wasn’t the means to an end – it was the
end in itself, and the children were never happier than when we pulled into
the RV (recreational vehicle) park for the night. And the parks, which
charge between £5 and £25 per night, are perfect – civilised enough to be
safe and wild enough to be thrilling.
Campbell River
No sooner had I parked than Frederick and Annabella would race to hook up
Beethoven to the fresh water and power supplies. Then they would squabble
over who was going to empty the waste water before gathering firewood and
building the campfire. Chores completed, it was time to go exploring,
discovering rope swings, crystal streams and ancient totem poles in the
surrounding woods.
Make no mistake: kids love camper vans – and so do their dads. The attraction
for children is partly the knowledge that, in theory, they can spend the
night wherever they like – parked on the beach or beside one of Canada’s
glassy lakes – and partly because the on-board washing facilities are
limited. Dads like camper vans because they’re much easier to handle than
they look and because they come equipped with an axe.
Mums seem slightly less enamoured of the motorhome, mainly because things
still need folding, sweeping and washing up, and also, I suspect, because
the average RV park doesn’t have a spa or a shop selling scented candles.
But they go with the flow, bringing order to the wilderness, while their
husbands play Grizzly Adams and their offspring reenact Lord of the Flies.
And as the fat summer sun sinks slowly over the Pacific and campfire smoke
drifts through the woods, grown men gather to play the traditional Canadian
game of outdoors one-upmanship. My advice is to keep shtoom, because unless
you’re Sir Ranulph Fiennes or you’ve recently won the VC, you haven’t got a
chance.
When Canadian men go on an RV adventure, their wives follow behind in a
support truck, carrying the essential extras. These will include canoes, a
motorboat, a fish smoker, a selection of barbecues, a satellite dish and an
entirely gratuitous string of fairy lights. Your pitch will look like a van
parked in the woods. Theirs will look like a United Nations aid station.
You’ll be scorching jumbo hot dogs over a fire and feeling pretty outdoorsy.
They’ll be broiling wild salmon the size of basset hounds over homemade
charcoal while whittling fish hooks from whalebone and watching baseball on
their weatherproof plasma screens, so don’t bother trying to compete. Just
send your kids over to hang out on their perimeter looking hungry and
they’ll come back with a cheery invitation to join the feast. One tip: take
beer. Mincing over to your Canadian neighbours clutching a bottle of
chardonnay does nothing for the reputation of our nation.
By happy accident, we saved the best until last, ending the expedition on
Quadra Island. If your idea of Canada is a panorama of cool forests, crystal
waters and distant mountains peopled by happy hippies high on natural
beauty, this is it. A day kayaking around the Surge Narrows inlet (£48,
including picnic; www.coastmountainexpeditions.com)
will make you consider emigrating, but in the short term, check in to the
fabulous We Wai Kai camp site. Owned by a local First Nations family –
“That’s what them PC folk call us injuns,” explained the proprietor – We Wai
Kai (www.wwkcampsite.ca) is La
Croisette of caravan parks. The best pitches have private beaches and some
are so popular that they’re booked up for years ahead, with families
returning season after season to build decks, stairways, pavilions and totem
poles from the driftwood piled on the sands. Some, though, have yet to be
annexed by Canucks, and if you book by mid-May, you could still secure a
prime spot.
On our last night, we built a campfire and sat around grilling salmon steaks
on hot stones and toasting marshmallows in the flames. The orange glow of
campfires girdled the bay like an amber necklace, fireflies glowed like
airborne embers, and the ocean was so still it reflected the heavens. Our
camper van sat in the shadows – solid, dependable and seemingly watching
over us as we scanned the sky for shooting stars. It was our first trip to
Vancouver Island but Beethoven’s ninth, and when I announced we were leaving
in the morning, all three children threw back their heads and howled like
orphaned wolf cubs.
Oh, and the gate lodge at Butchart Gardens? Never heard another word about it.
Nice people, Canadians.
— Chris Haslam travelled as a guest of Tourism BC (www.BritishColumbia.travel),
Air Canada and BC specialists Tailor Made Travel (0845 456 8050, www.tailor-made.co.uk)
- which offers 10 day self drive tours of Vancouver Island from £3,335 for a
family of four, including flights.
Getting there: fly to Vancouver with Air Canada (0871 220 1111, www.aircanada.com)
or British Airways (0844 493 0787, www.ba.com)
from Heathrow, with fares from about £450. Zoom (0870 240 0055, www.flyzoom.com)
flies from Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow, Gatwick and Manchester; and
Flyglobespan (0871 271 0415, www.flyglobespan.com)
flies from Gatwick, Glasgow and Manchester, from about £350.
Getting around: peak-season rental of a 24ft motorhome is £2,312 for a
fortnight with Fraserway (01483 500003, www.fraserway.co.uk).
Return ferry crossings to Vancouver Island cost £112, and £50 from Campbell
River to Quadra Island, with BC Ferries (www.bcferries.com).
Petrol is about 50p a litre.
Accommodation: full-service RV parks, which offer fresh water, “sani”
and electrical hook-ups, cost from £10 to £20. Telegraph Cove (www.telegraphcoveresort.com)
charges £12 per night; Pacific Playgrounds (www.pacificplaygrounds.vancouverisle.com)
at Campbell River charges £14; and We Wai Kai (www.wwkcampsite.ca)
on Quadra Island is £20 a night for beachfront pitches, but these are
without hook-up facilities.
Packages: a 10-night RV tour of Vancouver Island for a family of four
starts at £610pp for departures in May, including flights, with Frontier
Canada (020 8776 8709, www.frontier-travel.co.uk).
1st Class Holidays (0161 877 0433, www.1stclassholidays.com)
has 14-night itineraries from £960pp, including flights, for departures in
May.
