Discovery Passage is the strait between the Vancouver Island and the group of islands towards the British Columbia mainland, connecting the Strait of Georgia and the Johnstone Strait. As it's a fairly narrow waterway, the coastal beaches are frequently strewn with driftwood, from large logs to small branches and roots. Most of it is a result of logging that goes on heavily on Vancouver Island and Quadra alike, but the result is a very atmospheric, if often hard to negotiate.
We walk along the beach from Cape Mudge village to Cape Mudge lighthouse – itself an attractive building on the southern edge of the Quadra Island and further on along a pebble beach full of amassed driftwood. The sea surrounding Quadra, including the Discovery Passage is known for its reach wild-life and orcas and other marine mammals can be spotted even from the short Campbell River – Quadra ferry. We don't see any orcas but we do spot a few sea otters playing in the sea just off the stony beach!
It's a bracing walk and the landscape is interesting rather than conventionally beautiful, especially in the pearly-grey, diffused light of a cloudy day, but the driftwood and stones on the beach looks like fantastic sculptures, great logs like matches spilt by a giant, convoluted roots like surrealist abstractions.