Wickaninnish

What can I say about the West Pacific Rim? It is as you’d expect: wild and rugged with long sweeping sandy beaches, rolling waves and strong currents, drifting logs and lovely mature rain forests with moss-draped streams, hanging gardens of moss and ferns and twisted, stunted shorepine trees.

If you go outside the main season it is also quite isolated and apparently a lovely place for winter storm-watching.

We spent some time walking along Wickaninnish Beach at the southern end of Long Beach (sadly the Interpretive Centre and restaurant were closed for the season), watching huge cormorants diving for fish and the waves crashing onto the windswept sand. The beach is an explorer’s delight. Its location at the southern end of the 16km stretch of Long Beach allows it to act as a damn – collecting flotsam, jetsam and driftwood unlike any beach in the region. If you walk along the 1km coast trail to the steps descending to South beach you get a lovely vista of the coast. The pebble beach here is famous for the musical sound of the stones rolling in the surf. The longer 3.8-kilometre Nuu Chah Nulth Trail follows a path of raised wooden boardwalks through the dense rainforest towards Florence Beach.

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Heyjude

I have lived in the UK for most of my life, but when young I definitely had wanderlust and even ended up living in South Africa for several years which was a wonderful experience. I now look forward to a long and leisurely retirement doing what I like most - gardening, photography, walking and travelling.

9 thoughts on “Wickaninnish”

  2. Great photos Jude. That sandy beach looks (almost) as good as the ones here in Norfolk! I love the Totem Pole, but that wooden path through the forest looks as if it might be hard on the feet!
    Regards from a (continuing) hot Norfolk. Pete. x

    1. Thanks Pete. It is a very wild coast so not unlike north Norfolk, although I don’t remember seeing any rainforests when I was there (Norfolk that is!)

    1. Thanks Tina, that path led us on a much longer walk than we had intended!
      As for commenting I’m not sure it has been fully resolved, seems a bit hit and miss at the moment, but they are apparently monitoring the situation and continuing to tweak things, so hopefully it will improve! Sure will be good to be free again!

    1. Along the coast between Ucluelet and Tofino it is just a National Park and no residential areas except for a Native settlement. There are hotels as you near the towns but the rest is as nature intended. Thank you for your comments AD. What part of the world are you in? Paradise sounds OK 😉

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