Why this ride
Repeated coastal bends, headlands and frequent viewpoint stops. It also links naturally to Vancouver Island temperate rainforest.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Pacific Marine Circle Route
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 228 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 3 h 57
- Journey
- Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Access context
Check provincial road reports, wildfire closures, ferries and fuel range. Specific flag: weather; fuel gaps.
Seasonal context
May-Oct
Scenic road chapters
Sooke → Lake Cowichan
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 56 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Chapter facts
- Length
- 56 km
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Victoria
Victoria sits at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, the capital of British Columbia and the very British city that nobody expects on the Pacific coast. The Inner Harbour is the center of it, with the Parliament Buildings outlined in lights at night and the grand old Fairmont Empress hotel facing across the water, and ferries, seaplanes and little harbor taxis crowd the dock. The Hudson's Bay Company built a fort here in 1843, and the town grew from it, with a Chinatown that is among the oldest in Canada.
Read the complete Victoria write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Victoria sits at 0 km, early in the day. Next is Sooke.
2. Sooke
Sooke is the last real town on Vancouver Island's southwest coast before the road narrows and the forest takes over. West of Victoria, Highway 14 passes through the growing suburbs of Langford and then reaches this community of about six thousand people on Sooke Harbour and Basin, a sheltered inlet protected from the open sea by the long curving sandbar of Whiffin Spit. On a clear day, across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the snowy Olympic Mountains of Washington State fill the southern horizon.
Read the complete Sooke write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Sooke comes up 51 km in. Next is Lake Cowichan.
3. Lake Cowichan
At the eastern end of a long, deep lake in the mountains of southern Vancouver Island, the small town of Lake Cowichan marks the point where the Cowichan River begins its run to the sea at Cowichan Bay. The lake stretches about thirty kilometres west into the hills, surrounded by forest and logged slopes, and the river flowing out of it is famous for its steelhead and trout fishing and, on hot summer days, for tubing, as hundreds of people float lazily downstream from town.
Read the complete Lake Cowichan write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
101 km in you reach Lake Cowichan. Next is Victoria.
4. Victoria
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Victoria write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Victoria, late in the day.