Walk the Burrard Loop

Rating:
Summary: Urban Hiking in Vancouver
Review: This is the way to see Vancouver!!! Walking across Vancouver's North Shore is nothing new and was immortalized by the Spirit of the West song, "The Crawl". This book, admittedly is not as focussed on the drinking...

The author splits up into sections the Burrard loop which spans several municipalities from Vancouver over the North Shore, Burnaby, etc. If all section are completed, you will have presumably walked the entire loop past working harbors, parks, semi-wild areas, residential neighborhoods, and past the skyscrapers and slums of the downtown core. You will have walked on roads, highways, big bridges, little bridges, and trails of all types.

It's not the route presented that's the unique part of the book, but Chapman's approach. The sections are presented with an eye to getting you back to your original location after the walk and to this end, bus routes are followed, and options are given along the way for stopping for a coffee, washroom, lunch, etc.

There is a ton of flexibility offered allong the way and times are provided from the start of the hike and also from the start of each section. This makes for easy trip planning.

If there is a drawback from this type of approach to writing a hiking book it's that bus routes do change as do their frequency. This book was written in 2000 and changes to the bus system should be expected. Pick up a transit timetable on a bus or the Seabus before setting off if you'll be relying on that for transportation back to your starting point. Translink's website, www.translink.bc.ca, is also very useful for planning your route home after your hike.

For those interested in this type of walking in Vancouver, I'd suggest Chapman's other book, "Walk Horseshoe Bay to the USA" as well once you've done this one. I'm eager to get my hands on his newest book, "Great Walks of Vancouver: The Lower Mainland at Your Feet" which was published in May 2004 and provides even more. This latter book's abstract mentions that it includes the Burrard Loop, so it might be prudent to buy that one for the updated information and the additional hikes included there. Whatever your choice, you can't go wrong with this concept of hiking book. Happy hiking!