Benbow Park

Located adjacent to West Bay Elementary School.

Benbow Park is a pleasant park in the quiet Westmount neighborhood. It was a tedious trek up from Marine Drive to get there, but despite the steep slope of the area, there are still many things to do in this park. They even managed to carve out enough flat space to make a tennis court.

I've seen nine tennis courts in my park routing so far, and yet I've only seen two groups of people playing tennis. West Vancouver's courts are tragically under used, so I'm always impressed when I see people taking advantage of them. But overhearing their conversation, I realized it was father's day (yes, I found it was fathers day while skulking around parks by myself). Even though these people probably aren't super keeners, Benbow Park seems like a great place to take your Dad for father's day or any other day for that matter.

But tennis players and Dads aren't the only ones who would enjoy Benbow Park. Throughout the park, I spotted these narrow little trails:

They smell like mountain bikers to me. In the forested area on the western side of the park, there are more trails and also some makeshift jumps set up. It's not the most intense mountain biking location I've ever seen, but it would be good for bikers who are still learning.

Even if you lack any sort of special sports skill, there's still fun to be had at Benbow Park. That's because there's playground equipment!

That's West Bay Elementary School in the background. They've got a pretty nice playground that would be fine to visit outside of school hours (which will be all the time soon! summer is coming!), but that playground lacks a spacenet. In layman's terms, it lacks one of those red rope pyramid things. Fortunately, Benbow Park has that covered. However, it's an unusually small spacenet. I was a little bit disappointed by that, but I suppose that makes it better for young children.

There's also a piece of playground equipment that I'd never seen before at Benbow Park. It's a sort of standup teeter-totter device. I'll need someone to come back to Benbow Park with me, because I really want to try it out.

After exploring Benbow Park and my camera battery dying, I went home and phoned my Dad. That's why this route happened over two separate days. Happy belated father's day!

PPR
Good: tennis courts, mountain biking trails, playground, nice scenery, right beside a school
Bad: up a huge hill, muddy in some sections
7/10

West Bay Park

Located at the foot of Maple Ln.

I've known that West Bay has existed my entire life, but I had never been there. I'd never even tried to find it. I'm kicking myself now. West Bay Park looks like this:

The sand has some rocks in it, but that just means it's natural. It's not enough to deter me from taking off my shoes to walk on it. If I enjoyed swimming, I'd consider West Bay a fine place to swim. It's a far cry from Ambleside where the sand is imported, the logs are strategically placed, and there's a designated swimming area. I particularly appreciate the natural scattering of logs and driftwood on this beach.

There's also the fantastic view... but all waterfront parks have those. Still, they sure are impressive.

The park is actually kind of difficult to locate. It's at the bottom of a street called Maple Lane that is absolutely adorable.

To get to this street with any sort of convenience from Marine Drive, you have to go down a set of stairs. They're right beside West Bay Holistic Clinic and there's a landing with a bench half way down. There's also a bathtub planter with dolphins on it at the bottom. It's quite the setting.

The locals have taken full advantage of their location. Every waterfront property has deck chairs facing the beach, and most have some sort of watercraft sitting in the yard. One house even has a swing hanging from a tree at the edge of the lot.

The space in between the beach and the road is grassy with a few paths to choose from: one steep and gravelly, one that's paved with stairs and one that comes from another direction out of the trees. I didn't get a good look at the third one, but I think I know where it come out on the other end. It's right by the bus stop of Oxley St. I'll probably take that route down the next time I visit West Bay Park.

But back to the actual park! Besides the trails and grass, the space before the beach contains a few benches, a public washroom, and this creek that runs underneath the concrete path:

I thought that was really pretty. The whole park is pretty. Go check it out.

PPR
Good: swimming beach, washrooms, view
Bad: hard to find, not so private (there's a view of the beach from all the surrounding houses)
7/10

Oxley St. Park

At the foot of Oxley Street sits Oxley Street Park:

There's grass by the road, but Oxley Street Park is a waterfront park. The entrance to the beach is through a laurel hedge that forms an elegant archway over a platform with stairs leading down to the rocks. Often stairs leading down to a beach are weathered away and that last step is always a doozy. But the stairs at Oxley Street Park are worth noting because they are in excellent shape.

Enough about stairs, here's what the beach looks like:

As with all of West Vancouver's beach parks, Oxley Street Park has an incredible view. At this park, the best place to sit and look at the view is on a giant log that you can see one end of in the picture. It must have been quite a storm to get such a huge piece of wood so far up on to this little beach.

As you can see in the picture, there is a small section of this beach that's made up of small rocks, but most of the beach's ground is covered by one massive slab of rock. This makes for a whole series of tidal pools.

They were looking a little dingy and lifeless this time, but I bet they get good at different tides.

PPR
Good: stairs, tidal pool, giant sitting log
Bad: not good for swimming, very small
5.5/10