July 26, 2025
Day 4 — Ruckle Park to Gabriola
Tom here.
Today our plan was to get from Ruckle Park on Saltspring Island to Descanso Bay on Gabriola Island, just off of Nanaimo. As it involved two ferries and a decent amout of distance, we were up early again. Not so early we weren't able to make a pot (OK, 2 pots) of coffee to get going.
It was a lovely sunny morning, and though there was plenty of climbing through the backroads of Saltspring, the traffic was light and the pleasant morning made the slogs a lot less sloggish. We passed through Ruckle farm, and observed several free range turkeys annoying the less free range goats.
It was Saturday, and Ganges had its locally renowned Saturday market. We got to the turnoff from the backroads on to the main drag heading into Ganges, and ... it was a traffic nightmare, what with the construction and ferry traffic etc.
We had a coffee and some pricey market pastries -- we had made good time into Ganges, and only had a handful of kilometres to the ferry at Vesuvius. Once restored, we headed off to Vesuvius, where the ferry would take us to Crofton on the mainland. The road was tight, and the traffic bunched up behind us. I noticed a sign pointing out a quite back route for cyclists to Vesuvius, so we veered off. As it turned out it involved a number of 10-14% hills -- I'm not sure it was designed by anyone who had ever ridden a bike on it, and we felt we might have been better off taking our chances with the traffic.
We did get to Vesuvius, which has just about the chillest ferry waiting area we've encountered. Again a short trip with a short boost to the electronics, and we were in Crofton. We were out of water, so stopped at the old schoolhouse museum to fill up bottles and buy ice cream sandwiches.
The route to Nanaimo, where we would catch the ferry to Gabriola, was a mix of semi-fast highway with a decent shoulder and backcountry roads. There weren't a great number of places to stop, so we just kind of kept going and going, and by the time we got to Ladysmith we were done in, and flaked out in the park with chocolate milk and sandwiches until we felt more human.
We ended up getting an earlier ferry than we anticipated, found our reserved spot at Descanso Bay Park, and headed into the main commercial area in Gabriola in anticipation of getting pizza and beers at the local pizzeria. Well, without reservations on a Saturday night, that was an hour and a half wait, so we hit the cold beer and wine store for a 4 pack, got some noodles and chicken at the grocery store and went back to the campground to watch the sunset.
Today's ride: 83 km (52 miles)
Total: 163 km (101 miles)
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