This was a bike trip that was nearly postponed by the weather, at the last minute we were able to choose a favourable forecast and give it a go. Thee was an ambitious target of looking at sixty nine murals between Burrard Inlet, the Fraser River and Arbutus Bikeway. Turns out we can either do distance or looking at murals, but not both.

We gathered at Waterfront Station and slowly headed east, an early high poiunt being the discovery of Container Brewing, now in reserve for another day. We cycled past the old sugar terminal just off Powell now disfigured by a functional concrete bridge lacking elegance, style and panache. Never mind, it does its job.

Our route took us south passing Earnest Ice Cream, one of their ouposts anyway before we arrived at Trout Lake. The ride south from there to the Fraser was down Gladstone and we were lucky to see autumn foliage looking beautiful, lots of gold and orange. We almost sailed into the River District with a steep downhill on Kerr before turning sharply left to, eventually, be amazed by the bee garden and the housing in the River District which is proceeding apace.

The Bee Garden is temporary which sounds like bad news for the bees, we did learn a lot of bee facts, including how much honey a bee makes in its life, an unbeelievable amount. Beefore we left the area we were able to take in Alice in Wonderland and a stack of other murals and then headed east along the Fraser to the end of Burnaby Foreshore Park for an early lunch. With fair winds and following seas this is about one hour from Waterfront but the sandbanks and vissicitudes of mural spotting turned this into two and a bit hours, travelling on new bike routes and exploring new bits of Vancouver as well as collecting ideas for the next ride.

Post lunch we stopped at Northern Cafe on Kent, we recommend this for a breakfast stop, but be there early. Next stop was the Canada Line Bridge, some new panels on there helped to tell the Reconciliation story, we hoped there will be more to come. Richmond was brief, sunshine with threatening clouds over Vancouver before heading back across the river and west on 64th for more murals. We were hoping to be able to visit the War Graves at Mountain View, Remembrance Day is approaching and the maples create an evocative scene. Unfortunately first of all I couldn’t find it and then when I did it was being revamped and so was closed. We’ll have a look next time.

A few more murals out the back of Main Street and then a ride past Science World before we split off to go home via SeaBus or Lions Gate or just a short bike ride for the West End dwellers.

Overall we were lucky with the weather, company was excellent and next time we’ll have fewer murals and more bees with a possible diversion to Container Brewing now we’ve found it.

See the route details here from Iain’s Garmin Edge 800

Learn more about murals from Vancouver Mural Festival