Bicycle Touring Guides
Wheel Life column - 6 February, 1999
by Todd Litman and Suzanne Kort - Victoria Transport Policy Institute

You may want to use these long February evenings to plan bicycle adventures. Here are some guides that offer inspiration and helpful information.

"Touring the Islands; Bicycling in the San Juan, Gulf, and Vancouver Islands," by Peter Powers and Renee Travis is a wonderful little book brimming with information. There are fold-out maps with excellent visual representations of terrain. This is the book that we recommend most for inter-island adventures.

"Bicycling Vancouver Island & The Gulf Islands" by Simon Priest provides 108 recommended bicycle routes, with detailed maps and mileage data. The routes are individually short, typically 10-25 kilometres in length, but can be linked for longer trips. Some of the information may be outdated since the book was written in the early 1980's.

"Island Cycling; A Cycle Camper's Guide to Vancouver Island," by David Payne is a more recent collection of tour routes on our islands. Although the route information appears to be good, we find Payne's writing style to be as grating as fingernails on chalkboard. He writes far more about himself than most readers care to know: his marital problems, his drinking preferences, his various physical and mechanical problems. Although Payne acknowledges that he is no expert on bicycles, he proceeds to give too much overly-specific advice, including a section on the "bungee cord." Give the man a good editor!

Our own book, "Best Bike Rides in the Pacific Northwest" is a collection of fifty individual day rides scattered through British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and Idaho. The routes, based on popular club rides in each area, range from 25 to 100 miles in length, and include detailed information on roads, terrain and services.

Two similar books are "Bicycling the Backroads Around Puget Sound," by Erin and Bill Woods, and "Biking the Great Northwest: 20 Tours in Washington, Oregon Idaho & Montana" by Jean Henderson, both of which give good descriptions of one-day bicycle rides.

One of our favorite bicycling resources is the "Backroad Mapbook; An Outdoor Recreation Guide," Vol. II: Vancouver Island. This atlas shows paved and unpaved roads, and includes recommended routes for road cycling and mountain biking, as well as information on other sports.

The South Island Mountain Bike Society (SIMBS) has produced a map of Hartland mountain bike trails that is now available at local bike shops. For information on Vancouver Island mountain bike trails visit the mountain biking website at http://www.simbs.com/