How to make the most of the great outdoors in Canada

By day four of my journey, the cumulative effect of scenery (largely spectacular) and company (mostly fascinating) had begun to swirl in my travel-addled brain, and I had one of those instants when you doze off momentarily, and when you awaken you can't quite remember where you are. I glanced down at the map in my guidebook, from a very well-known publisher, and was startled to read "Colombia".

The trip around the West had certainly been wild, but from a natural rather than man-made perspective. Happily, the preceding word was "British", which meant I was rocking and rolling through a glorious misprint rather than a strife-torn South American republic. Back on course, or at least on a world-class detour.

Victoria to Vancouver is one of the best-served city-pairs on the planet. Between 7am and 8am on a weekday morning, there are 11 flights from the capital of British Columbia to its largest city. Take your pick from Twin Otter seaplanes, Shorts Skyvans or even a Sikorsky helicopter, and take a dramatic ride across to Vancouver's harbour ­ framed by skyscrapers and mountains ­ in as little as 25 minutes. It is one of the finest ways to arrive in any city, anywhere in the world. But take my advice, and take the even prettier route ­ assuming you have at least four days to spare.

First, get your Vancouvers sorted out. The one you instantly think of is the commercial and cultural capital of Canada's West: the fine city of Vancouver. But the political capital of British Columbia is Victoria, at the southern tip of a separate landmass called Vancouver Island. This blade-shaped isle is the largest island off the Pacific coast anywhere in the Americas. (There is yet another Vancouver, a city across the US border in Washington State. But if you find yourself here, you're in the Wrong Place ­ and well on your way to Bogota, Colombia).

Vancouver Island is about the size of Ireland, but with far fewer people and even more dramatic land- and seascapes. You wouldn't immediately think so, from the way the Trans-Canada Highway whimpers to a conclusion. The longest road in any single country tackles countless engineering challenges in nearly 10,000km from St John's in Newfoundland, but then rather fizzles out at what feels like a gentrified suburb in Victoria.

"More English than England" is the cliche applied to BC's capital. Yet as you aim north-west to the far end of the 500km-long landmass on which it resides, no stereotypes apply.

You could make part of the journey along the West Coast Trail, a hiking trail that taunts the adjective "impassable". It was originally used as a way back to civilisation for shipwrecked sailors. Along the way, you will see creatures as large as whales and as small as humming-birds. Or take it easy aboard the Malahat train, which rolls comfortably north to Courtenay, about halfway up the island, in four-and-a-half hours from Victoria.

Whichever route you choose, by the time you reach the northern half of Vancouver Island, nature asserts total domination. Try to be a passenger, not a driver, as the highway twists and turns to avoid the uplands and thread through the forests.

Mankind's last stand, at least as far as Vancouver Island is concerned, is Port Hardy: a modest place, considering it is one end of a magnificent journey. Yet it is also welcoming; as a new arrival with no fixed abode but a boat ticket for the next day, I felt I was being passed gently from house to house until someone volunteered a room for the night at a reasonable rate.

The whole town wakes early on alternate days from mid-May to the end of August, when the daylight ferry departs. BC Ferries runs a friendly car-ferry operation for a journey that takes 15 or 16 hours. You can rent a cabin on board at a reasonable rate ­ though goodness knows why anyone would want to: the natural wide-screen thrills that await are best seen from deck, not through the confines of a porthole. This is the Inside Passage, a centuries-old course that connects far-flung fragments of Canada. Mariners exchange the uncertainties of the open ocean for the calmer but threat-strewn waters inshore, protected by a gorgeous straggle of islands.

The schedules mean you are guaranteed to arrive in Prince Rupert after dark. Not such a bad thing, considering the way that a voyage through natural splendour arrives in an ungainly settlement (named, since you ask, after the first Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company). The port is the last call for the ships of the Alaska Marine Highway before reaching America's semi-detached state ­ and starting point for The Skeena, one of the great Canadian railroad adventures. This VIA Rail train is named for the river valley that it shadows for much of the morning ­ though I prefer Grand Trunk Pacific, the original name of the line. By lunchtime, the train is carving through the contours of British Columbia, a cross-section of terrain that provides a one-day crash course in physical geography.

Prince George (the pioneers did not squander time thinking up new place names) is a route centre and logging town ­ and still a railway junction. Passengers from The Skeena stop here for the night, to avoid missing the scenery on the next section, east to Jasper ­ just across the Alberta border. But another train runs south from here: the Rocky Mountaineer, a luxurious private affair that offers a range of tours in the West. From Prince George the train follows the Pacific Great Eastern line. The route was conceived during the 1861 Gold Rush in the Cariboo mountain range, though it took nearly a century to be completed: the track from Prince George all the way to Vancouver was finished only in 1956. Until five years ago, the Cariboo Prospector ran the full length of the line, and there are hopes that the renaissance of Canadian railways ­ partly in response to environmental concerns ­ could bring it back. Let us hope so, because the engineering acrobatics and scenery, from granite peaks to desert scrub to the run down the Fraser River valley, deserve the widest possible public.

The train crew do their utmost to inform and entertain. The precipitous Brandywine Falls, just a few metres from the wheels, were named as the result of a bet between two surveyors about who could most closely guess the height of the cascade: one bet a bottle of brandy, the other wine. No prizes for guessing the origin of the name of the Bridge of 23 Camels. A herd of these unfortunate animals was brought in to help the mining effort.

The train pays a courtesy visit to Whistler, traditionally voted best ski resort in North America, before touching Howe Sound ­ "the southernmost fjord in the northern hemisphere" and sweeping above the port of Horseshoe Bay on a Riviera-like corniche.

On the final approach to Vancouver, traditionally voted friendliest city in the world, the train passes a marshalling yard full of exotic containers (if that is not stretching an adjective). Should you doze off for a moment and awaken to see the foreground full of steel boxes marked Linea Mexicana, you may conclude that taking in a planet's-worth of scenery has left you south of a couple of borders. Next stop: Colombia

GETTING THERE AND GETTING AROUND

GETTING THERE

The biggest tour operator from the UK is Canadian Affair (020-7616 9184; www.canadianaffair.com), which this year has doubled seat capacity to 400,000. It now part of the same organisation as Air Transat, and also charters in capacity from MyTravel Airways and Thomas Cook (the latter offering remarkably comfortable 35-inch seat pitch on flights to all the eastern gateways: Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto.

Besides the regular departures from Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester, departure airports for the summer include Birmingham, Edinburgh, Exeter, Glasgow and Newcastle.

In the past few months a new scheduled link on British Airways (0870 850 9 850; www.ba.com) has begun between Heathrow and Calgary, while Air Canada (0871 220 1111; www.aircanada.ca) plans a link from Heathrow to St John's in Newfoundland: using a Airbus A319, it will operate the last transatlantic flight of the day from Europe.

The key gateways of Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto have a growing number of links. Besides the frequent departures from Heathrow on BA and Air Canada, Flyglobespan (08705 561 522; www.flyglobespan.com) and Zoom (0870 240 0055; www.flyzoom.com) are offering a wide range of routes.

GETTING AROUND

Air

To cover the vast expanse of Canada relatively quickly, domestic flights are the answer. Air Canada has the most extensive network (with many services branded as its Jazz subsidiary), but its no-frills rival WestJet (www.westjet.com) is strong between all the major cities. For reaching northerly points, Air Canada again has the widest network ­ though Air North and Canadian North compete.

Rail

A private luxury train operator, Rocky Mountaineer (00 1 604 606 7245; www.rockymountaineer.com), runs tours in British Columbia and Alberta. It covers two stretches, from North Vancouver via Prince George and Whistler, and the southerly link from Kamloops across Alberta to Banff and Calgary.

The national network is operated by VIA Rail (00 1 888 842 7245; www.viarail.ca). VIA's busiest stretch of line is between Quebec City via Montreal and Toronto to Windsor, on the US border opposite Detroit. Its main artery is the 6,351km transcontinental line from Halifax on the Atlantic to Vancouver on the Pacific. To cover the whole journey it is necessary to change in Montreal and Toronto.

In Quebec, you can go by VIA train to the Gaspé Peninsula, or deep into the province to Jonquière and Senneterre. The most northerly trip is aboard the Hudson Bay through Manitoba. British Columbia has two extra VIA lines. One, on Vancouver Island, runs north-east from the capital, Victoria, to the town of Courtenay. The other crosses from the trans-Canada line at Jasper (just inside the Alberta border) to the Pacific port of Prince Rupert.

Bus

The leading operator is Greyhound Canada (00 1 888 661 8747; www.greyhound.ca).

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