My friend and I had travelled along the West Coast Road (aka HWY 14) as part of a sketching trip in 2003.

Sue and I followed a path that ran down through a natural arbour of trees to a beach. My friend Sue’s painting of this arbour, the highlight for her. For me the highlight was the beach with a pile of bleached driftwood against blue-black rocks with the ocean surging in the background.A driftwood chair, held together with rusty wire, abandoned on the beach.
Point No Point has a small restaurant at the top where we stopped for a lunch of shrimp sandwiches and beer, a highlight when Al and I were there in 2013. I often call long flowing green seaweed ‘mermaid’s hair’ but on these round rocks it looks more like a medieval haircut for friars.Other beach delights, for an artist at least, were the glistening black rocks, often riddled with holes and covered with barnacles.
And the inevitable kelp seaweed.
Map of Vancouver Island showing the highlights of the coastal Hwy 14 from Sooke to China Beach where the Juan de Fuca trail begins.

• Highlights of Sooke.
• Muir Creek Beach.
• French Beach Provincial Park.
• Point No Point.
• Sandcut Beach.
• China Beach Provincial Park and nearby second beach.
• Mystic Beach.

More about Vancouver Island.