Saturday June 20, 2014

A lovely morning, we packed away a dry tent, and ate our oatmeal without too many bugs. The route today was a little more coastal than rural, a very nice route.

The camp site was 4 kms south of the small Town of Chemanius. In the early 90’s the Town was going through a tough period with the lumber mill cutting back on production. They decided to entice tourists to the area by painting murals on their buildings. The Town is now known as mural town and is very popular. The mill is still in production, but tourism is a close second for employment.

After Chemanius we headed towards Ladysmith. Ladysmith has a nice downtown that commemorates the Boer war, most of the street names are named after military figures. Now, to get up to the downtown area you have to climb a steep hill. I asked Ralf if he wanted to see the downtown, I wasn’t particularly bothered. Ralf’s response was “I know your Dad was in that war, but I am not bothered”. I was helplessly laughing, I had to explain to Ralf that Dad was in Borneo, not Boer. The Boer war South Africa and circa 1880 sorry Dad.

We decided to carry on towards Nanaimo and have the time to wander around the Town. This meant jumping on to the TransCanada Highway, a busy highway with a fairly good shoulder.

We arrived in Nanimao around 12:30 and checked out the hostel. The manager wasn’t here, so we said we would be back about 2:00.

We headed downtown to see if there was anything else. Howard Johnson at $90.00 plus tax, I am guessing we won’t be staying in any motels while we are cycling across Canada.

We had lunch at a Tim Horton’s and a little wander around the downtown. The downtown is clean but nothing to write home about.

After we had settled into the hostel, Ralf went to the bike shop co-op to get a new brake cable, his had snapped and he had been cycling without front brakes for the past couple of days. He had a good chat with the owner and paid $28.00 for the repair.

We decided to eat out tonight – fish and chips on the wharf, followed by Nanaimo bar ice-cream, lovely.