15 March 2026 – Needles of rain and 5C as I start this post, but we’ve just had two consecutive days of sunshine. The first unexpected, the second predicted, and both a reason to go walk by the water.
The First, Unexpected
Certain the gloom will persist or worsen, we linger over a long café lunch. Suddenly the sky is bright, so we abandon indoors and set off for Kitsilano Beach. Our route takes us north on Cypress Street — where of course I notice winter moss.
By now, it’s not the only act in town. Plum blossoms are out everywhere you look, including right here.
We could stick with Cypress and get to the water the obvious way, but we don’t.
This alley…
offers one bright garage door, plus a less-obvious way to reach the water, from another angle.
Once there, a pole-top gull — undoubtedly in the pay of the tourist board — welcomes us to English Bay and a long view of all those freighters waiting their turn to carry on down Burrard Inlet to the Port of Vancouver.
Smooth sand in front of us, just waiting for volleyball season, but over there, a bit to the east, a great spill of rocks.
They guard the entrance to False Creek, which in turn leads the eye on across the water to Sunset Beach and the towers of West Vancouver.
Drop eyes instead to our own toes, and the reward is the interplay of seaweed, gritty sand, mussel shells and the angles and colours of each individual rock.
We backtrack throughVanier Park, drawn by the shrouded boats and bright Blue Cabin, all tucked up in Heritage Harbour.
This is the free, outdoors, floating component of the adjacent Vancouver Maritime Museum, offering a curated collection of vintage wooden boats and currently also hosting the Blue Cabin arts residency program.
We prowl each walkway, peer into the tent sheltering a restoration project…
and compensate for mostly shrouded boats by at least reading their historical signage…
and enjoying the dance between red bumper balls and glittering shafts of open water.
The Second, Predicted
Counting on sunshine (though well-bundled in winter clothing), I set out for a planned morning walk. This one will set off from Tsawwassen, in the City of Delta, and our rendezvous is the St. George SkyTrain station in the neighbouring City of Surrey.
The angles and brilliance of the building right next to the station…
are in dramatic contrast to the flowing lines, and the very different brilliance, of our chosen trail.
We’ve just taken the 12th Ave. entrance to the Dyke Trail, in Boundary Bay Regional Park.
This is a great, long curving ribbon of a park, all along the curve of Boundary Bay itself, and we’re here for the curl at the Tsawwassen end of that ribbon, looping south to Centennial Beach and around. We decide to walk out along the dyke, and then return on the Raptor Trail, in behind the dunes.
Plum blossoms here too, this time paired with the rough gold of winter fields rather than the emerald of winter moss on trees.
We’re nowhere near the Raptor Trail, not yet, but we meet one anyway — a juvenile Bald Eagle, peacefully contemplating life down by the water.
He’s not eating anything, he’s not doing anything, and he has no interest in any of us.
We are all extremely interested in him, however! People point, murmur, pass news about him one to another all along the trail. Farther on, a woman comfortably snugged down in a hollow, cradling the great long telephoto lens of a true twitcher, assures us she has already seen him, photographed him, and is now more interested in all those Black Oystercatchers at this end of the trail. (We turn our own attention to Oystercatchers for a while, glad that someone has identified them for us.)
We pivot at Centennial Beach, turning inland slightly, in between sand dunes, to join the Raptor Trail. Right on cue, a Coopers Hawk, silhouetted against the clouds.
Good grief, it is windy. And, good grief, that makes it so much colder! Little giggles of delight when, just for a moment, the wind quits smacking us around. My companion wishes he’d brought his tuque; I am smug with the earflaps down on my winter hat.
But no complaints. It is a glorious day. and the nip in the air puts that much more snap, that much more energy, in our walk.
A pause to admire this elegant Great Blue Heron, so very vertical…
and the Mallard in the adjacent rivulet, so very horizontal.
Another pause, for the exuberance of this tree, throwing its branches at the sky…
and a final pause, a giggle, a poke in each other’s ribs, at the very different mood evoked by these trees…
knocked crooked and proof that there are some very industrious beaver in the area.
Time for lunch. We set off, chattering about all we’ve seen and agreeing that we’ve had huge good luck with the weather.
(Still needles of rain, as I finish this post, and by now only 3C and heading on down the scale.)
WALKING WOMAN 