Thursday 21 June 2012

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

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