Things to do in Stanley Park
With so much to experience, create a day from your trip!
Explore the park with a guided tour or find it all on your own. Plan some family fun activities at numerous destinations. Play a game of golf or tennis with a friend or take someone special out to dinner. The decision is yours.
Stanley Park Pitch & Putt and Putting Green
The Stanley Park Pitch & Putt provides sculpted fairways, mature trees and lush greens in a spectacular setting alongside English Bay.
This pitch & putt course is minutes from the downtown center. The course is situated near a lot of Stanley Park’s greatest amenities such as the tennis courts, lawn bowling club, and Second Beach swimming pool.
With 18 holes ranging from 40 to 100 yards, this splendid course is free of hazards and offers an unrivalled setting bordered by a stunning rhododendron garden.
Ride the Stanley Park Train
Welcoming over 200,000 visitors annually, the Stanley Park Railway is popular with tourists and locals alike. The 20 gauge, two kilometer track winds through the woods over ground cleared by Typhoon Freda, the most devastating storm in Vancouver history that blew through in 1962.
Passengers can find a close-up look at a classic engine and a fast picture before boarding for the 15 minute ride.
The gem of the Stanley Park Railway’s collection of older locomotives is a locally-built replica of Canadian Pacific Railway Engine #374, famous for pulling Canada’s first transcontinental passenger train into Vancouver from the late 1880s.
Stanley Park Railway is adjacent to other popular destinations like Lumberman’s Arch, Malkin Bowl, and the Rose Garden.
Stanley Park water park
Splash around in the Variety Kids Water Park at Stanley Park, an ideal summer destination for people of all ages. A favorite place to cool off for pedestrians and cyclists, the park is unsupervised, and is available on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Location
Located near the seawall in Lumbermen’s Arch, near wheelchair accessible washrooms, the water park is also a short walk from popular family-friendly attractions like the Miniature Train, Train Station playground, and the Vancouver Aquarium.
Take advantage of the surrounding grassy area, nearby concession stand, and picnic tables for a bite and to wash off.
Tennis courts at Stanley Park
Eleven free tennis courts are located near the Beach Avenue entrance to Stanley Park. Utilize the courts on a first-come, first-served foundation, with a 30-minute limitation on play if someone is waiting. More free courts are located near Lost Lagoon along Lagoon Drive in Robson Street.
During the summer season (late April to early September), six courts in the Beach Avenue entrance to Stanley Park are operated as cover courts. They may be booked up to a week beforehand, call the pro shop at Stanley Park’s tennis courts.
The Seawall in Vancouver
Vancouver has the world’s longest uninterrupted waterfront path. The 28 km Seaside Greenway is an uninterrupted pathway, such as the Stanley Park Seawall, that extends from the Vancouver Convention Centre into Spanish Banks Park. Fantastic for a walk, cycle, or jog, it’s by far the most popular recreational spot in town.
The Seawall is divided into two clearly marked sections – one for walkers and joggers (closest to the water), and one for cyclists and inline skaters (inside course ).
Make certain to follow the hints to be sure to use the seawall safely, particularly on sunny summer weekends and days once the area is very busy.
Walking and biking around Stanley Park on the Seawall
The 9 km part around Stanley Park requires two to three hours to walk, or one hour .
History of the Seawall
Building of the Seawall started in Stanley Park in 1917. A lot of its incremental progress was modulated by Park Board master stone mason James Cunningham in the late 1920s until his retirement 35 decades later.
A plaque commemorating Cunningham’s work could be found from the rock face above the Seawall in Siwash Rock.
On September 21, 1980, the complete Seawall loop across Stanley Park was announced officially finished with the final paving between Third Beach and Second Beach.
Since 1980, the Seawall has been extended outside of Stanley Park.
In 2010 and 2011, two parts of the Seawall, Stanley Park (near Second Beach) and English Bay (near Sunset Beach), were revived to deal with ongoing concerns with erosion.
With deep foundations and revived surfacing, the new Seawall is constructed to withstand the tides for several years to come.
Stanley Park trails
Forest paths in Stanley park offer over 27 kilometers of quiet refuge, far from the maddening crowd, on the park’s more developed periphery.
These broad, bark-mulched interior paths provide a flavor of what this peninsula should have been like centuries ago when, before logging, its towering cedar, fir and hemlock woods reined supreme. In actuality, many pathways were formerly employed as’slide rows’ where lumberjacks pulled felled trees into the water’s edge for’log flourishing’ into the nearest sawmill.
These earliest trees are called’monument trees’ and is located by park trail blazers in three different areas: off Siwash Rock Trail, Third Beach Trail and north of Beaver Lake on Lake Trail.
About the trail names
Trail names remember, not only a town after transported by’horse power’ (Bridle Path), but a lot of early pioneer names also, especially those who have been significant in Park Board background (Rawlings Path – the park’s greatest trail named after its longest serving Superintendent). Trudging the park’s paths will bring walkers and joggers closer yet to nature whilst keeping them cooler on even the hottest day.
Ravine Trail provides a wheelchair accessible route from the Seawall, where Beaver Creek flows into Burrard Inlet, along the creek around and around Beaver Lake on Beaver Lake Trail.
Many paths bear the names of people who were instrumental in the city’s or Stanley Park’s history:
Boardwalk
The Cathedral Trail boardwalk, situated just north of the Lost Lagoon rock bridge at Stanley Park, is in one of the park’s most biologically rich areas.
Made from western red cedar, the 75-metre-long raised boardwalk protects plants and dirt from being trampled, while improving drainage and allowing for the greater movement of small mammals and amphibians. Additionally, the boardwalk improves pedestrian safety as it connects to a visible crosswalk.
The demand for a boardwalk system to control access to and address fragmentation of habitat has been identified from the Stanley Park Ecological Action Plan.
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