The best traffic-free bike rides around Area A (Baynes Sound)

Shingle Spit is a pebbly gravel-bar beach and Hornby Island’s main ferry landing for visitors. The spit is a year‑round wildlife haven, where you’ll likely see plenty of seals, sea lions, cormorants, and dozens of bald eagles during the herring spawn. Just steps from the ferry dock sits Thatch Pub and Restaurant, the island’s only full-service pub with a waterfront deck, making it the perfect lunch spot to enjoy some local fare and take in the scenery during a day of hiking in this beautiful area.

The Ford Cove to Shingle Spit Trail winds through forested terrain from Ford Cove to the ferry-landing area at Shingle Spit, following the coastline and staying mostly level, making it suitable for hiking or casual cycling. Along the way, you pass wooded hillsides, small bridges over gullies and streams, and near the halfway point, a seasonal waterfall. There are plenty of breathtaking views of the channel and surrounding islands, making this path the perfect mix of forest and coastal scenery.

Ford's Cove Marina is a small, sheltered harbour on Hornby Island’s southwest shore, beside a sandstone-and-gravel beach, popular for swimming, tide-pool exploring, and watching winter storms, sunsets, and passing wildlife such as sea lions, orcas, and seabirds. It’s a community hub and a gateway for boaters, with restrooms, picnic tables and a general store that also serves fish and chips, making it a perfect scenic lunch spot. The dock pilings are a nesting habitat for purple martins, so keep an eye out for them while you’re here.

Helliwell Provincial Park is beautiful, home to a rare coastal ecosystem on the eastern tip of Hornby Island, where wind-sculpted bluffs meet old-growth Douglas fir and Garry oak. The park’s open meadows and cliffside forests overlook the Strait of Georgia, with fantastic views across the water to the Coast Mountains. It’s a quiet, exposed headland shaped by salt spray and ocean wind, known for its wildflowers, diverse birdlife, and fragile shoreline habitats.

Davis Lake Main is an old, wide gravel logging road, now used for recreation. It is usually smooth but after heavy rain it can become rutted, and muddy. It takes hikers and bikers through forests of Douglas fir and western hemlock, and past Perseverance Creek and China Pools.

Cumberland Community Forest stretches more than 500 acres, and is mostly second-growth coastal forest with a web of well-maintained trails. These trails are open to hiking, mountain biking, trail running.

The China Bowls are created by Perseverance Creek, which flows with cold and clear water, smoothing stone ledges into deep basins that glow turquoise when the sun hits them. The pools are named after the nearby historic Chinatown site, and are surrounded by ferns, cedars, and Douglas fir.

This morning’s donut run!