In the days during which VanRamblings’ west side Co-op apartment was undergoing reconstruction / a thorough re-piping, we did what we could to absent ourselves from the dust, the noise and the general mayhem.
On one sunny pre-Labour Day Thursday afternoon, we spent an enjoyable afternoon walking around Granville Island. The video above constitutes a recording of the first half of that walk; the second part of the Granville Island video will be published next week. We’ll see you back here then.

Summer in Vancouver would seem to be over, with the arrival of torrential west coast rains pouring down on our city. We’ll hold out for a warm, sunny September, though, a usual state of weather affairs in Vancouver.
VanRamblings is pleased to report that 90% of the renovation of our apartment is complete, most of the remaining work involving stuffing our clothes back in our closets, washing the floors, replacing all that we store in our cupboards in their usual home, and just generally attempting to recover a semblance of a ‘tidy’ life that’s been missing for some time now.
Amidst the chaos we were disinclined to publish on VanRamblings, a creative venture we’ll set about to correct in the coming days and weeks.

As work continues on the renovation of VanRamblings’ Co-op condominium apartment — drywalling, tiling and grouting in the bathroom (no use of the ‘facilities’ today, oh me oh my), as replacement panels are affixed to the ceiling (they have to be ‘built’ first), and ‘boxes’ are constructed to house ‘the new piping‘ installed throughout the apartment (after which said boxes are puttied up ready for sanding later this week), with all the concomitant banging, drilling, and covering of almost the entirety of the contents of our home in plastic — we have taken our leave of Chez VanRamblings these late sunny August days to explore our Kitsilano neighbourhood.
Upon our arrival home from our journeys each day, on the recommendation of the inimitable J. B. Shayne (that’s him on the left, and a svelte VanRamblings on the right), we have set about to download new lustrous music. Today, we ‘acquired’ The Books’ new CD, The Way Out. Thus far, in the initial couple of listens, we are intrigued with this trippy art / folktronica collage. At MetaCritic, with a Metascore of 81 / 100, The Books’ latest emerges as one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the year.
This early week has brought beautiful west coast weather, the mean temperature 75° Fahrenheit or 24° Celsius, with a perfect cooling breeze taking the sting out of the midday sun (of course, we’ve been wearing our new Neutrogena sunscreen — having ‘lost’ our Vichy sunscreen at the Halifax Stanfield Airport last Wednesday — and our new Frenchy’s cap).
Tonight we’re off to dinner with a friend, to return later in the evening, when we’ll attempt to make sense of the clutter in our beleaguered apartment, and do our best to at least begin the process of bringing order to the chaos that has ensued as a consequence of the ongoing re-piping of our the entire Co-op building in which we live. Have to say, though, that Cambridge Plumbing are doing a superb job, and keeping ‘the mess’ to a minimum (it’s just that we like to kvetch … but, really, it’s not that bad).

As a youth growing up on Vancouver’s eastside, VanRamblings’ parents told us that the area known as Spanish Banks ‘belonged’ only to the people of the west side, and that we would not be welcome to ‘use’ their park, nor frequent their part of town. For the entirety of our youth, our only palpable knowledge of Spanish Banks came through the photos we saw of this pristine waterfront, either in photos in the daily newspaper, or on TV.
In the late 60s, when we met the woman who would be our spouse, she —
as an habitué of Vancouver’s west side (where a favourite aunt, uncle and cousins of hers lived) — pooh-poohed the nostrum of VanRamblings’ parents; thus we became infrequent visitors to the patch of waterfront on Vancouver’s west side, even as VanRamblings’ ‘parents voice’ continued to remonstrate our discomfort level was somewhat alleviated, but not entirely.
In the 1980s, when we moved to the west side (long story that, the details of which we’ll save for another time), we managed to overcome our undue prejudices, and by 1988 a walk along Spanish Banks and through the trails of UBC became a daily feature of our lives, as it remains to this very day.
The video published on VanRamblings on this Saturday takes in a walk, yesterday, along Spanish Banks, from Locarno Beach along and through to Tower Beach, in an area just east of the University of British Columbia.
Although Vancouver’s absolutely lovely and bewitching Spanish Banks is not the Annapolis Valley’s Annapolis River (about which we’ve written frequently in recent days, as part of our vacation travelogue), tranquil and calming, VanRamblings believes there is much to recommend about our favourite stretch of beach within the city of Vancouver (our favourite stretch of beach in British Columbia may be found along Long Beach, or Chesterman Beach, near Tofino, about which we’ll write another time).
Please enjoy today’s video presentation, and if you live or are visiting Vancouver may we recommend a stroll along Spanish Banks (after all, the beach is yours), one of the true natural wonders of Canada’s west coast.