Terra Nova Adventure Ride Recap

Having breakfast at Tandem Bike Cafe before the #YVRFamilyBiking Terra Nova Adventure Ride

#YVRFamilyBiking Terra Nova Adventure Ride biking up Heather Street 

Sunday's Vancouver Family Biking Ride was tons of fun! It was probably our longest ride yet, almost 15km from our meeting spot at Tandem Bike Cafe to Terra Nova Adventure Play Environment.

Five families joined the ride, a total of 13 people. Four of the six kids were riding their own bikes. Linnaeus was the youngest of them, & he had trouble getting up some of the hills, so he rode on the Yuba part of the way, while Clint carried his bike on his Metrofiets 'flatbed' deck.

Crossing the Canada Line Bridge

Having a few cargo bikes around means we can always be flexible & give rides to the youngest kids when they get tired. If you want to come on our next ride with a young rider let us know--we'll likely have several cargo bikes on the ride who can carry an extra kid &/or tow or carry their bike as needed. It's a great way to get little kids riding longer distances & give them more confidence without having to commit to them riding all the way or having a meltdown before they get home.

Read more on cargo bikes & supporting kids learning to ride here. 

We rode down Heather & over the bridge at a leisurely pace, with quite a few stops to load & unload Linnaeus & his bike from the cargo bikes, as well as meeting two of the families along our route, plus a bathroom/water/play stop along the West Dyke Trail in Richmond. The total time was about two hours, probably two thirds of that time we were riding, I think.

Our route followed the Heather Street bike route south to Kent & then we went over the Canada Line Bridge. On the Richmond side we took the Canada Line Bikeway, then Smith Street, Beckwith Road, No. 3 Road, Capstan Way, then River Road for a block until the beginning of the dyke trail. Heather Street was quite quiet, more bike traffic than cars.

Quick pit stop along the West Dyke Trail

The on-road part of our Richmond leg was busier, particularly along No. 3 Road, but the drivers were patient enough & there is safety in numbers. If you are a less confident rider on your own, or riding with a child on their own bike, you may want to take the sidewalk for some parts. Once we got up to the dyke trail, it was smooth sailing for everyone.

The weather was perfect on the way to the park--sunny & not too hot. There was plenty of shade there & the parents got to sit & relax a little at a picnic table while the kids ran around in the playground. Terra Nova is a really amazing playground for kids of all ages. Now that Bronte has gotten a little bit bigger & stronger, she has figured out how to climb all the way up the giant rope ladder tangle that leads up to the 10 metre high tunnel slide.

The ride home was quite warm--I regretted wearing jeans as they stuck to my legs--but still enjoyable with the breeze off the water & the sunny weather. The West Dyke Trail is well served by washrooms & water stations at multiple locations, so we were able to refill all our water bottles as needed.

I really enjoyed the ride & the kids love Terra Nova, so I am certain we'll do this ride again sometime soon.

Very tired from her epic climbing adventures on the giant structures in Terra Nova, Bronte passed out in the bakfiets

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Richmond Night Market Ride Recap

Saturday night our friends invited us to join them for a ride down to the Richmond Night Market. We took our three cargo bikes & one regular bike down Prince Edward & across the North Arm Trail to Heather, then over the Canada Line Bridge. The weather was gorgeous for a ride--though it started raining a little as we left our house, it cleared up along the way.

I was a little nervous about how busy the market would be; the last time we went it was shoulder to shoulder busy, difficult to navigate. There was a long lineup outside the gates, but the kids were entertained by the roaring animatronic dinosaurs that were sprinkled throughout the site, & we moved fairly quickly. Adults pay to get in, but it's only $3.25. If you want to go six or seven times over the summer, you can get a pass that also entitles you to skip the lineup.

Food was the first order of business when we arrived. I got a satay chicken roti cone, the kids had Rotatoes (those spirals of deep fried potato on a stick), & Oliver ate seafood tempura & fish balls. Getting these things involved a lot of waiting in line--particularly for the Rotato. Not sure that was worth it, given that they're available at practically every big market type event.

We also shared a couple of bags of mini doughnuts that our friends bought. I was seriously considering churros & ice cream, as well as a deep fried mars bar, but maybe we'll go back again this summer. We didn't walk around the entire market, but I didn't see any seating whatsoever, which makes feeding kids a bit tricky. Linnaeus isn't bad at eating standing up, but Bronte still tends to drop her food & we lost a good percentage of her Rotato.

A highlight of the evening was when the kids went in the bouncy castle. Bronte was allowed in, but the staff suggested I go in with her since she's still so young. I love playing around inside those giant inflatable structures, so I was pretty happy about having an excuse to go in. This one was huge & even had a ball pit at the bottom of a slide. This was particularly amazing because I have never been in a ball pit before. They just weren't a thing when I was a kid in the small towns I lived in. I enjoyed the ball pit so much I had to make a video.

Once we'd all eaten, watched a yoyo performance, & looked around a bit, I checked the time & it was 11pm! We headed back to where we'd locked up the bikes in one big tangle--no bike racks at this event--& packed the kids into the bakfietsen. They were in there just long enough to get a cute photo. Linnaeus decided lying down in our box wasn't comfortable enough, so once we'd ridden back over the Canada Line Bridge, we switched him to the Yuba Mundo. He has been shoehorning himself into Bronte's Peanut Shell seat lately, which is actually kinda hard to balance, since it's right at the back of the deck.

The ride home was mostly up hill, but it's not to steep up Heather Street. I really love riding at night, especially with friends. I'd have loved it more if my dynamo lights hadn't given up the ghost. We discovered that they weren't working on the way to the market. Sometime in the past week they seem to have died because I'm sure they were working not that long ago. Hoping we can keep them going not have to replace them yet, as that's a pricey fix. We've got lots of battery operated lights we can use until we fix or replace them, anyway.

Bronte fell asleep pretty early on in the ride home--she seems to like sleeping in the bakfiets & has now had quite a few naps in it. Linnaeus, on the other hand, stayed awake all the way home--it was midnight when we arrived! Just a few days into summer break & bedtimes have gone right out the window!

If you're thinking about biking to the Richmond Night market, it's a pretty good way to get there. It's quite close to the Canada Line bridge, which is lovely to ride over. The traffic is very busy in the streets around the market, but it's really slow moving & there are flag people directing. It wasn't hard to get across the stream of cars or make left turns, as the flaggers stopped traffic for us. There is very little to lock bikes to at the market--we used quite a few locks to attach our bikes together, making them very awkward to pick up & carry away.

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Review: Terra Nova Adventure Play Environment

It's not a playground, it's an adventure play environment.

The Buzz

We've been going out to Richmond fairly often in the past year to visit a friend who lives there. We often go for a bike ride along the West Dyke Trail & were curious about the playground we saw from the trail as it was being built. It had been on the list, in the back of my mind, for a while when I read an article about it three weeks ago. So did everyone else, apparently. I heard reports from friends who went shortly after the article came out of 40-kid lineups for the more popular playground equipment.

Last weekend we were out in Richmond again, babysitting our friend's daughter so mom could go donate blood. We biked the three kids over to Terra Nova to see the new playground, hopeful that the crazy crowds would have abated. Well, they sort of had.

Maybe next time we'll go when everyone is awake...

There were still 20-kid lineups for the tall spiral slide & the zip line. Everywhere you looked there were kids on the play equipment & with a lot of trees throughout the park, it wasn't easy to keep an eye on the four-year-old & five-year-old while the one-year-old slept in her bike seat.

The Playground

The slides were taller than anything else I've seen in playgrounds in Vancouver. Much of the equipment was made of logs, rather than the metal & plastic stuff that seems to be the standard nowadays. There is the 'log jam' that looks like a pile of badly stacked logs, great for clambering on & under. Nearby is a sort of obstacle course thing (billed as an 'aerial walkway', it's about 1-2 feet off the ground) with ropes to walk along & steps to jump from. The whole place has a slightly more natural feel to it, probably because they've left so much of the trees & shrubs around the play areas.

The rest was pretty similar to the stuff in the parks around Vancouver: a merry-go round rope pyramid thingie (though the Terra Nova one is inverted), large disc swings, big half-buried rocks to jump along, rope nets to climb up, zip lines, slides, a small water play area.

It is a lovely park, but I have to say, with all of the trumpeting about ONE MILLION DOLLARS, etc, I expected something completely different & better than any other playgrounds we've seen in Vancouver.

20-kid lineup for the spiral slide

Design

Terra Nova is partly conceptual art--perhaps that's part of what's behind calling it an "Adventure Play Environment" rather than a park or a playground. Hapa Collaborative, a local landscape architecture firm, created the park with references to the area's history. You notice it in the fishing net-like climb up to the spiral slide, & the 'log jam' climbing structure. There is also a fence maze of some sort which I didn't see.

The kids spent a third of their time waiting in lines, maybe another third eating lunch--we didn't actually explore the entire park. Hopefully we can go back again during the week when I suspect it'll be much less busy.

Amenities

Half of the playground is well shaded, which will be nice on hot days in the summer, but all those trees make for poor sightlines--an issue if you have more kids than adults to watch them. The shrubs separating the two halves of the playground & the parking lot make it feel a bit secluded. The part of the playground with a large hill, near the ziplines, is totally open. There are several wooden picnic tables there, which are unfortunately not shaded at all.

Near the tables is a row of portable toilets, but I warn you: they are in dire shape. If you don't have to use them, I would avoid it. Apparently, proper washrooms are in the plans for the park eventually.

Multi-modal travelling: the cargo bike on the skytrain

Getting There

Though the park is right on the West Dyke Trail, the majority of people drive to it. There were three bike racks that I saw. The large parking lot accommodates about 80-100 cars. Transit doesn't go that close to the park--the #401 bus along No. 1 Road is maybe a kilometre away. We did our usual multi-modal trip to get there: bike to the Canada Line, then get out at Lansdowne Station, then bike to the dykes, about 5km. It's only five minutes until you're off road, but the streets are rather lacking in bike infrastructure. Though it's not busy, you do need to be cautious at the blind corners & a couple of oddly designed intersections.

The Takeaway

I liked the natural feel to the park & I think the structures are designed to encourage the kind of play & risk taking that's good for kids. Terra Nova is definitely meant for kids four or five & up. Even kids that age will probably need help getting up to the tallest slide, or using the zip line. I think kids of six to ten would love it. There wasn't really anything that the baby could use at all, unlike most parks in our neighbourhood, which usually have something for toddlers. We'll go back, but I'm not sure we'll make a special trip just for the park.

Have you been to Terra Nova yet? What were your impressions?

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