Day 5 - Victoria to Port Renfrew

Today we start our tour of the Island. Our first stop on our journey to Port Renfrew was at the campus of Royal Roads University to tour the gardens at Hatley Castle, a National Historic Site. There were themed gardens surrounding the castle which was constructed in 1906. A nice place to walk around for an hour in the morning.

From here we continued on the coastal highway past Sooke and stopped at Shirley to take a short hike to visit the Sheringham Point Lighthouse, an important landmark for sailors entering the Straights of Juan de Fuca. It is now decommissioned but has been restored and preserved as a National Landmark.

A little further down the road we stopped at the China Beach trail and did the short hike through some dense woods to a nice sand beach. It was a windless day and the temperature was around 24C. A bit unusual we were told.

It was now late afternoon when we arrived in Port Renfrew. This is a really small town (population 117) with a few cottages, a general store and The Renfrew Wild properties that include cottages, a "lodge" and a pub. We were in "the lodge" which is a fairly basic two storey motel type accomadation with a small kitchenette in each unit. There is no cell service and the internet is definitely not high speed which is making this blog post a time consuming operation. The Pub is short staffed so were were lucky to get somewhere to eat.

After supper I went to the pier next to the pub to catch sunset. A fairly calm evening as the sun set and a thin layer of ocean fog started to develop.