Great weather, a good turnout and tons of positive feedback: Year one was a success by any measure! Thanks to all our volunteers, workshop hosts, consultants, sponsors and especially those of you who participated – see you again next year, we hope, and please keep track of our Facebook page and blog as we start making plans for 2012.
Introducing … the Sooke Slow Food Cycle
Community groups sharing a live/work/eat locally philosophy are banding together to present the first Sooke Slow Food Cycle (SSFC) on Thanksgiving Sunday, Oct. 9, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. This non-profit, volunteer-run, fundraising initiative shapes up as a fun, inspiring day of exercise, fresh air, education and discovery. Stay current with our plans by reading the regular updates on our blog.
Our mission: To do our small bit in championing a greener, brighter, more sustainable future for this beautiful part of the world. In keeping with the values of our partner organizations, we’re part of the quiet revolution that’s slowly but surely trading cars, pre-packaged food and rampant consumerism for the simpler pleasures of bikes, buses, pedestrian trails, locally grown produce, alternative energy and the lost arts of homesteading so familiar to the region’s early pioneers.
Choose between two bike routes both beginning at the Sooke Harbour House, and enjoy a variety of educational stops along the way. The scenic 33km Red Route traces oceanfront and country roads west of Sooke and is intended for mid-level and advanced riders. The 18km Green Route is suitable for casual cyclists, hikers and families; it winds along a little-known, mostly off-road trails network heading east through town to the Galloping Goose. Our volunteer flag teams will be in place at busy intersections and we’re putting the word out to Sookies that their town will be a little busier than normal on the day. Maximum safety for all is a priority.
Plan your day out: Get cracking early by parking at Edward Milne Community School (near where you’ll wind up at the event’s conclusion). Then bike the 5.5 km (about a 25-minute ride for a moderately fit cyclist) to registration at the Sooke Harbour House. We’ll have a drop-off zone at the end of Whiffen Spit Road for anyone catching a ride to the start line, but given that parking is limited around the Harbour House, we’re asking that you park-and-ride from the high school or the adjacent BC Transit lot.
Registration begins at 9 a.m. We invite you to spend the hour prior to our 10 a.m. start enjoying live music, touring the inn’s famous edible gardens with Byron Cook and/or warming up with teachers from Ahimsa Yoga. Following a blessing from the T’Sou-ke First Nation, take off at your own comfortable pace – fast or leisurely, on two wheels, two feet, skateboard, stroller or horseback. Your map/ticket and our volunteers will point the way. And our bike-wheel sign posts and direction markers will keep you on course. Either follow the designated routes or make up one of your own in visiting as many as 20 farms, homes, businesses, educational centres and green spaces for mini-workshops and demos on a wide variety of themes: backyard chickens, beekeeping, food preservation, foraging, edible seaweeds and solar power included.
Important note: Please pack a lunch, water and power bars. You’ll need to sustain yourself while working up an appetite for the evening feast to follow back home. There will be some tasty samples of simple food – kale chips, pumpkin soup, edible seaweed – along the way. And a handful of coffeeshops and casual spots will be open in town; the Sooke Harbour House is extending its “local’s special” to all ticket holders, and the Stone Pipe Landing downtown is offering Sooke-raised turkeys on a special Thanksgiving menu. Rather than a foodie event, however, we’re heeding Slow Food Canada’s commitment to locally grown food by helping modern homesteaders make their backyards more productive.
Do as much or as little of the busy agenda as you like. Young children might find the level and the amount of cycling in this event to be too much, and some of it involves traffic. But this would be an ideal experience for competent cyclists pre-teen and older. That said, all ages will have no trouble enjoying a bonus event that can be attended without a ticket: The Collective Transition, a Transition Town symposium free to the general public at Phillips Memorial Park (10 a.m. to 4 p.m.).
Ticket holders riding one or other or both of the routes can hang with expert foragers and seaweed collectors at Muir Creek, visit lovely working farms, learn how bees do it, tour the brand new Charters Creek Salmon Interpretive Centre and much else. We roll rain or shine, so come prepared for Sooke weather – which can switch from sunny to wet at 20-minute intervals as systems cross the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Our finale is set for the T’Sou-ke First Nation at 4 p.m. with a drum circle and the awarding of prizes in our fashion competition. Leave the spandex at home and wear an outfit you’d love to don while out cycling: be it a business suit, your tiara and cape, or comfortable farm or work clothes. Let’s take cycling back as a means of transportation and self-expression!
Ticket coupons are available on this website via Paypal and, in Sooke, at the Stick in the Mud Cafe and the Sooke Harbour House ($21 per person/$42 for family groups).
$1 from each ticket sale will be donated to nutrition-based cancer research on behalf of three local farmers battling the disease. For ongoing updates about the event, please check out our blog as well as the event’s Facebook page and Twitter account (#SookeSlowFood).
As noted above, all are welcome free of charge to The Collective Transition at Phillips Memorial Park (aka the old golf course) in the heart of town. At this lively, free-wheeling culture jam, you’re invited to test-ride recumbent and electric bikes, learn about permaculture, wildcrafting, foraging and cob building, and chat with representatives from the Ancient Forest Alliance, the Compost Education Centre, the Organic Gardener’s Pantry, OUR Ecovillage, the T’Sou-ke First Nation, Sooke Transition Town and Slow Food Vancouver Island. If you’re on foot and have a yen to pedal, bike rentals will be available here through West Coast Outdoor Adventure Rentals.
The volunteer-run/non-profit SSFC is sanctioned by Slow Food Vancouver Island and Gulf Islands, the regional branch of the international organization dedicated to supporting anyone growing “good, clean and fair” food.
The event is an initiative of the Juan de Fuca Cycling Coalition and the Sooke Transition Town Society in collaboration with the T’Sou-ke First Nation, the Juan de Fuca Community Trails Society and Sooke Food CHI.
Learn more about our objectives here …
Please print, post & share!
Sooke Slow Food Cycle 2011 Flyer
Print it and Post it
Like Us!
