At the southern edge of the Cowichan Valley and bordering the communities of Cobble Hill and Mill Bay is the village of Shawnigan Lake. A popular place to live and vacation, the area is renowned for its rugged beauty and its namesake, a 7-kilometre long lake that provides the opportunity for fishing, swimming and sunbathing in the summer.
North of Shawnigan Lake is the rolling farmland and craggy hillsides that comprise the community of Cobble Hill. Travel through winding country roads which will take you past working farms, vineyards and orchards. All the while you’ll be transported back a century or two when local farms fed the whole Cowichan Valley. Midway along Cameron Taggart Road is Merridale Road, which will lead you to Canada’s first estate cidery. Mill Bay, reached by a scenic ocean drive north of Bamberton, or the Trans Canada Highway, is now a quiet seaside community that overlooks Saanich Inlet.
Mill Bay has grown in leaps and bounds of late and nowhere is that more apparent than at the Mill Bay Marina, home to a top-notch waterfront bistro and yacht moorage. Nearby is a full-service shopping centre and kitty-corner to that is Brentwood College School, home to the T. Gil Bunch Theatre and the Brentwood International Rowing Regatta.
Visit Tourism Cowichan to learn more about this and other nearby communities.
