Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1215222
ENERGY BOOST Ride the Glide rents electric bikes for easy exploring – delivered to wherever you are in the city. tourismvictoria.com | 15 The cliffside path that snakes along Dallas Road has one of the most stunning panoramas in the city, year-round. Over wild pink roses and a weathered timber fence you can look straight across the Salish Sea to Port Angeles or watch the windsurfers jump waves down below. When the sun is out, it seems like everyone is here with their dog or taking a book to the beach. Start your walking tour at the Ogden Point Breakwater with a coffee at Breakwater Café and Bistro, take a photo in front of the 1912 light- house, then start walking east as far as you care to go. Another way to get a good view of the water – both salt and fresh – is to ride a bike along the Galloping Goose and Loch- side trails, cross-city pathways converted from old railway lines. From Victoria Harbour, venture north along the Gorge Waterway (a six-kilometre sea arm that stretches from Selkirk Trestle to the Portage Inlet), across scenic wood-trestle bridges, over duck- filled ponds and through the forest before fetching up along the shorelines of a brace of local lakes. You can rent a bike for the day at Sports Rent, The Pedaler or Cycle BC Rentals.ca, or join a guided excursion with Bike Tours Victoria. Want to see wildlife? To the west, in Colwood, lies Esquimalt Lagoon. Set back behind a long strip of driwood-covered coast- line, this migratory bird sanctuary is filled with families of Canada geese, swans, herons, gulls and ducks. People come from all over to photograph the waterfowl, and local artists have even taken to creating elaborate driwood birds that you can spot along the beach. Time permiing, Botanical Beach makes a highly recom- mended day trip. Yes, it's a two- and-a-half-hour drive west, just past Port Renfrew, but you won't find anything else like it in all of B.C. Over the years, rocks, ocean waves and sea urchins have punched unnatural-looking orb- and kidney-shaped tidal pools into Botanical's so sandstone. Plan ahead to arrive at low tide, enabling you to peer into these aquarium-like ecosystems filled with crabs, anemones, starfish, sea urchins, hermit crabs, fish and countless other fascinations, while the surf crashes below. BESIDE the Water Victoria's daily life revolves around the Inner Harbour (opposite page); twilight at Ogden Point (top right); the ebb tide at Botanical Beach reveals aquarium-like tidepools (above right); riding the Galloping Goose trail past inlets and lakes (above); the seaside path beside Dallas Road is one of Victoria's favourite strolls (THE FAIRMONT EMPRESS AND BOTANICAL BEACH) DAVE HUTCHISON; (OGDEN POINT) DOUG CLEMENT; (GALLOPING GOOSE) DEDDEDA STEMLER/DESTINATION GREATER VICTORIA; (DALLAS ROAD) LEANNA RATHKELLY