Day 15: Hope – Abbotsford
in Uncategorized
Total Distance Travelled: 90KM
Total Distance Travelled Entire Trip: 763KM
Total Time: ~7 hours
The weather was a bit uncertain today, it was overcast and not particularly warm with the potential for rain in the forecast. Today I would go over the very last piece of the KVR, the road bridge that is currently in use across the Fraser river in Hope originally carried the KVR on the lower level of the bridge.
Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of it from the bridge, but it’s visible from streetview. On another historical note, I found the old Hope railway station that was built by Great Northern:
Old Great Northern Station
It appears it used to house some shops or restaurants, but now appears totally vacant. After crossing the Fraser, I joined Highway #7 towards Vancouver. From a cyclists perspective this stretch of Highway #7 was great – it was fairly flat and offered great views of the coast mountains and the Fraser river. As an added bonus as a railfan it follows the CPR mainline, so you could easily spot the passing freight trains.
Highway #7
Progress was fast on the highway, I was averaging around 25KM/h. I had a choice, I could either cross the Fraser river and try and follow the Trans-Canada trail or continue on Highway #7 to Mission and head south to Abbotsford from there. Further down the road however that choice was made for me, a road sign indicated a bridge was out further up and instructed motorists to detour via Highway #1 on the south side of the Fraser.
Another view from Highway #7
The bridge across the Fraser isn’t exactly cyclist friendly, it’s a narrow 2 lane bridge with no shoulder. Motorists could only pass me if the opposing lane was clear. Thankfully traffic wasn’t that heavy, but many people ended up passing rather close to me to get by. This seems to be an issue with many of the older bridges around the Vancouver area, they weren’t originally built with cyclists or pedestrians in mind.
The bridge across the Fraser
On the other side of the Fraser, I was able to follow seldom used country roads for the first part of my route until I reached Chilliwack. At Chilliwack I stopped at an excellent Indian restaurant which had a Chicken Madras challenge. They only prepared the dish Indian spicy and you could apparently get your name on a wall if you ate it all without any dairy products at the table. I didn’t really care about the name on the wall part, but I ordered it with some Aloo Gobi and it was excellent. The Indian waiter commented that he couldn’t eat spicy food like the Chicken Madras. Not wanting to stuff myself before having to finish cycling to my B&B, I packed up a bit of the food. From Chilliwack I followed some country roads to link up with the dike road on the Sumas river. Unfortunately around this time it also started raining so I don’t have much in the way of pictures to post. As you could west from Chilliwack, some mountains start getting in the way – which is why the Highway #1 jogs to the south. I first thought about following the Trans-Canada trail route over to the other side of the mountains, but it was steepest and lead up a road with a private property sign and no Trans-Canada trail marker. It also was a truck route for some business further up the mountain, so this wasn’t particularly appealing. Luckily I found another route on Old Yale Rd which luckily had a bike lane, and I was able to get to my B&B. The Abbotsford area is quite odd, thanks to the agriculture land reserve you have cases where there is a row of McMansions on one side of the road, and a farm with cattle on the other side of the road. Development restrictions prevent the land from being built on. Biking through the suburbs of Vancouver on side roads is interesting, it’s a side of the area one would never typically see as a tourist.
B&B
The B&B I booked was very nicely done up, even my small room was very nicely done up. The B&B didn’t have any easily walkable food outlets, and not wanting to ride even further on my bike to go grab something I ended up ordering in some pizza. I spent the evening relaxing and planning my route into Vancouver the next day.