Jeff suggested a bike ride around Barnston Island, so today we packed up the bikes and headed over for a leisurely 10 km loop around the island, all of which is private land, save for two tiny regional parks, Robert Point and Mann Point. The former has a couple of picnic tables and paths out onto a sandy beach, while the latter is all beach.
The weather was the same smoke haze we’ve had for most of the past few weeks, giving photos of the day a weird alien light. It was otherwise pleasantly warm, not hot, though it did start feeling muggy by early afternoon.
The full gallery of photos can be seen here: Barnston Island photo gallery
The ferry ride, which is really a tugboat affixed to a barge, takes just over two minutes. Once on the island, we headed counter-clockwise. I’m not sure why, we just did. One site suggests going clockwise, though again I’m not sure why. There’s not enough traffic to really make a difference either way.
Speaking of traffic, we encountered numerous cyclists and a total of five motor vehicles–two cars, two truck and a motorcycle, for an average of one vehicle every two km. All of them came from the opposite direction, so I say we chose the right way to travel.
Most of the land is agricultural and Avalon Dairy has a large farm here, full of mooing cows. The Katzie First Nation also has a reserve here on the south side, though the majority of it is located across the river in Pitt Meadows. Mann Point also offers a nice view of the Golden Ears Bridge, if you like looking at bridges with weird names.
Our first stop was at Robert Point. This is not so much a park as a parket or perhaps a parkling. There are a few picnic tables on a small patch of grass, a washroom, some trash bins and that’s pretty much it. A group of people were there and because they were a group, they pretty much filled the entire park. They were playing, of all things, croquet. The park does not really lend itself to a good croquet layout, but they didn’t seem to mind. We went down to the beach, checked out the log booms, then headed back to the road and onward to Mann Point.
Mann Point is where we spent most of our time, stopping at the beach to chill out, have some lunch and in Jeff’s case, work on the essential all-body tan. I opted to explore along the shore and edges of the beach and grabbed a few photos. I was surprised that there was no one else on the beach. It’s not a huge place like the beach at English Bay, but I expected there’d be at least someone else there tromping around in the sand and cursing the smoke-filled sky.
A couple of guys did briefly show up on bikes, but turned around when they saw the beach because riding bikes on a sandy beach is basically impossible.
We left Mann Point and continued on back around to the ferry dock, passing by fresh skid marks on one of the smoother sections of road (is this what the locals do for fun?), an abandoned house being slowly consumed by vegetation, and several other properties that actually looked pretty snazzy. In all, it was a perfectly pleasant way to spend a few hours.
