In February, a friend noticed that all three of the small cabins at Sooke River Campground, a campground I was entirely unfamiliar with, were available and for a very reasonable rate during an April weekend that they had available. Impulsively, I booked one while friends booked the other two. Given that April is typically a wet and cool month, the cabins would be a welcome respite from the potential weather.
The route to Sooke was the exciting part: from the ferry, it is over 70km of almost exclusively bike path, made up of the Lochside Trail and Galloping Goose, and a significant portion of this is gravel path in the forest, all at rail-grade. It was truly magical to spend so much of the ride in nature and out of earshot from cars.
I chose to ride my Bombadil which was currently set up with drop bars, with my dual Fab’s Chest bags (small front, large rear). This proves to be a little shy of volume for camping for me, but being able to leave the tent at home freed up the space I needed. The cabins are very rustic, with plywood sleeping surfaces and without any supplied dishes etc, so the tent and my stove setup were the only omissions from my full tent camping setup.
We rode out as a group of six, stopping fairly regularly and generally not rushing. It took over six hours to make the 73km distance, but we arrived fresh and feeling great. It was hard not to feel energized when spending so much time in the forest, without major hills, and far away from the noise and danger of cars. The Lochside trail is nice, having some very beautiful sections and is mostly pretty well protected from vehicles.. but the Galloping Goose is the star. Absolutely stunning, mile after mile.
We reached our destination, the Sooke River Campground, and settled into our cute but very basic cabins. The remainder of the campground was basically large RV’s and trailers; not the kind of vibe that interested us, but our cabins faced away from the remainder of the campground and thus provided a more private setting.
When I say basic, I mean that we still had to bring our full sleeping kit minus a tent – the “beds” were plywood, which matched the rest of the decor within. I’m not complaining, though – all we needed was a roof over our heads where we could keep our stuff dry. In this respect, they were just right. When the intermittent showers showed up on the morning of our departure, the shelter of the cabins couldn’t have been more appreciated.
We stayed two nights, giving us a full day to explore our surroundings. We opted to continue up the Goose to Sooke Potholes. Trestle bridges, the ruins of a vacation hotel that never opened, and beautiful scenery were some of the hightlights, as well as lounging riverside for a beer.
Our ride back to the ferry was pleasantly long, and the monotonous nature of the gravel rail trail through the woods never became boring – in fact, I couldn’t even get used to the beauty.
