Category Archives: Travel

Hatley Castle

About half an hour from the center of Victoria BC is a large estate called Hatley Castle. It is a pretty grand place in a lot of land. Much of the land is now turned over to a university with the campus buildings spread out through the estate. The old house is still there and I think it now an administrative building for the university. I read that it is also used for a lot of filming work.

The house is quite impressive and there are also some formal gardens. We wandered around the outside of the house and up the hill a little. We could look over one of the gardens from the terrace area but it appeared the access to the gardens was restricted when we were there. Not sure whether that was a COVID issue or just for work to be done. The lawns slope down towards the sea and there is a nice view from the terrace. It isn’t hard to see why someone chose to build their home there!

Geology Lessons In Stratification

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Short Sand Beach was a pretty place to hang out but it also would be great place for a geology field trip. There were some very clear strata in the rock and they were angled from the level. It appeared that the corner of the beach was in the middle of the slope of the strata with the angles opposed on either side. Low winter sun makes the shading on the strata stand out. Every time I see something like this, it reminds me of a friend from school who used to impersonate a teacher whose Welsh accent really made the words sing! You know who you are…

Patterns In The Sand

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Another repeat of a previous theme. Water flowing over the sand on a beach creates some interesting patterns. The sand on Cannon Beach included a lot of very dark grains. These made the visualization of the movement of the sand easy to do. It also allowed you to see where the water was flowing deeper or shallower which helped when walking through the water running across the beach.

Backlight For A Seastack

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During the evenings at Cannon Beach, we could see lots of lights out on the water. Fishing boats were out at work and their lights were very bright. I am not sure whether they only fish at night or not. During the day, it would be hard to spot them without the lights giving you a clue since they were generally quite far out. However, one boat was closer in than the others. It was right behind on of the sea stacks near Haystack Rock. With a lot of mist in the air, the light from the boat was diffused and provided a backlight to the rock. It wasn’t lone before the boat came out from behind the rock and the effect was lost.

Pacific Fleet Home At Esquimalt

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Across the water from Fort Rodd Hill is the Canadian naval base of Esquimalt. This is the headquarters of the Pacific Fleet for the navy. From where we were, you could see some of the ships in the harbor. There were a few small patrol boats that were in use but the larger ships were tied up.

Short Sand Beach

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We had a sunny, if chilly, day while down in Oregon. We headed south of Cannon Beach to Oswald West State Park. There was an easy trail down to a bay with a sandy beach, predictably named Short Sand Beach! The parking lot was very icy and we wondered whether the trail would be okay but, once you were on the gravel, it was a good surface. Coming out of the trees on to the beach, was a lovely entry. You couldn’t see much until you got there and it was a gorgeous beach.

Plenty of people were down there. It was popular with surfers and a number of them were out in the waves. Headlands were on either side of the bay so the beach was sheltered from north and south. The sun was low in the sky since it was December, so the south end of the beach was pretty cold. Get a bit up the sand and out in the sun and it was a lovely spot to be standing and walking. I imagine it will be very busy during the summer.

Ships Look Better From A Distance Part 2

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A while back, I produced a post about the way in which ships look a lot rougher when up close compared to from a distance. In that case, it was a Washington State Ferries vessel I was considering. In the shipyard in Victoria that was across from where we were staying, there was a catamaran ferry undergoing work. The bow of the ship was very close to the fence and you could see exactly the same thing. The steelwork welds were easy to see at that range and remind you that these ships are heavy engineering.

Cannon Beach Black Bunny Population

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We were walking through Cannon Beach back towards our hotel when we saw a couple of black rabbits eating grass by the road. They didn’t seem easily spooked by our presence and we walked on our way. A little internet searching when we were back in the hotel explained that there is a population of black rabbits in Cannon Beach that are descended from rabbits that people have released. They are big rabbits compared to those we see around here.

I decided to grab the camera late one afternoon to see if I could get any photos of them. I didn’t have long to look but figured it was worth a try. I had walked about ten meters when I saw my first rabbits. There were a bunch of them within a block of the hotel. I saw some on an open area of grass and one that was closer to me did run away towards a bush. It them leapt up on top of the bush and stayed there chewing on the leaves. Never seen anything like that before!

Fort Rodd Hill

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As the gateway to the west coast of Canada, the area around Victoria has a military history. One location that is now no longer in service is Fort Rodd Hill. It sits overlooking the entrance to the harbor with the navy base sitting a short distance across the water. It is like many of the forts you find on the west coast with gun emplacements, bunkers, accommodation and spotting locations for the gunners. The biggest threat you now face is the large number of geese that seem intent in getting in your way and also contaminating where you are walking!

The location is well maintained and, since it was a weekday when we re there, not terribly busy. With the sun shining, it was a nice stroll to explore the facilities. The walls were pretty substantial, and it might have been fun to get a drone up to look down on everything but a) I don’t have one and b) that close to the navy base probably means they aren’t allowed anyway.

Craigdarroch Castle

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One of the places we saw mentioned in Victoria when we were staying there for Thanksgiving was Craigdarroch Castle. It was described as being in the town itself so we decided to swing by as we were heading out of town towards some other locations. The “castle” is a big house up on the hills. It has a pretty good view across the town by the looks of it. I am not usually terribly interested in the insides of buildings like this. The outside is worth a look but the interiors are usually rather old and musty, so we skipped that and walked around outside in the sun.

The building is in the middle of a residential area so it is a little strange to be surrounded by houses but it was a sunny day and the building is interesting so we had a look around before heading off on our way.