Find inspiration for your next trip to Vancouver Island with these pre-made itineraries, routes, and guides!
Vancouver Island Road Trips
Discover what all the fuss is about while road tripping to some of Vancouver Island’s wildest destinations. Connect with your inner adventurer while walking among the giants in the old-growth rainforests and lose yourself on windswept beaches or snowcapped peaks. Abundant with natural wonders, bustling cities and quirky roadside towns, Vancouver Island offers a diverse range of road trips guaranteed to tick items off your bucket-list while creating memories that will last a lifetime. Check out these four routes that are sure to show you the very best this island has to offer.
Road Trips
Vancouver Island Wine Guide
Winemaking began on Vancouver Island as early as the 1920s, with fruit wine made from local berries—a traditional that endures today, with not only fruit wine but honey wine (mead) and still and sparkling wine from grapes made here. Most are boutique-sized estates with grapes grown and wine made on site, and among them are many family-run enterprises where you’ll find a welcoming clan member pouring your tasting. Some offer tours and tastings only seasonally; if you’re visiting outside the June to September period, check ahead to confirm hours. In the summer and early fall season, even many wineries that don’t have full-service restaurants offer lovely picnic areas licensed for wine consumption with the food you’ll surely source from other local farms and producers.Â
Plan your Island wine route with a designated driver and enjoy responsibly at the region’s wineries, restaurants and tasting bars.Â
Wine Guide
Vancouver Island Brewery Guide
Vancouver Island is home to more than 40 craft breweries spread all throughout the lower half of the Island. From Victoria at the southern tip, where the whole microbrewing movement got its start when Spinnakers Brewpub opened in 1984, to Port McNeill, and across to Tofino on the west coast, there is a diverse range of breweries sprinkled all over the Island, all producing artisanal beers and often using local ingredients. Some are ultra-local, designed to serve their own communities or neighbourhoods, which means you have to visit them in person if you want to taste their beers, while others have expanded to distribute throughout BC and even beyond its borders so you’ll see their beer on tap at bars and restaurants wherever you go.
Brewery Guide
The Vancouver Island Cider Path
Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands that sit off its eastern coast are perfectly suited to the sweet, complex world of cider. Wet winters combined with sunny spring and summers and the crisp fall days of autumn means Van Isle is becoming a bit of a Canadian cider Utopia. And we have the cideries to prove it. Strap in the passenger seat while a good friend drives you through the flavours of Vancouver Island.
Cider Guide
First Nations Culture & Attractions On Vancouver Island
Vancouver Island and the abundant life-giving waters of the surrounding Pacific Ocean are the Traditional Territory of the Coast Salish, Nuu-chah-nulth, and Kwakwakaw’akw People.
Embark on a transformative trip and seek Indigenous experiences from urban Victoria to the wilderness of the Pacific Rim. Let Indigenous wildlife viewing and dining opportunities, accommodations and cultural experiences guide your Vancouver Island itinerary.
First Nations Attractions
Vancouver Island Spirit Path
North to South and East to West, Vancouver Island is brimming with distilleries whose products, processes and philosophies are as diverse as the individuals and companies who own and manage them. The distilleries on the route have created spaces for visitors and residents to imbibe, learn, and celebrate Island spirits. Fermented and distilled BC honey? Yup, we have Canada’s first. The World’s Greatest Gin? Check. Sunsets and sea air as unofficial ingredients in single malt whiskey? On Vancouver Island. Van Gogh and Hemingway’s favourite spirit Absinthe? You can find it here.
Invite your friends, gather up your family, and explore Vancouver Island’s guide to craft spirits!
Craft Spirit Guide