Cumberland Look Around

Today we drove to the little town of Cumberland
near Courtenay on Vancouver Island and had a look around. It is a lovely place with all the heritage homes intact and really a very funky neighbourhood. Cumberland is not on the ocean as are most towns on this big island, but it is just a few minutes away.

We stopped and had a wonderful lunch at Tarbell's Cafe and had a long talk with one of the residents. Seems this town puts on quite a lantern festival in the spring, Asian artistic lanterns.
I think things are about to change for Cumberland, though, because of the proximity of some of the housing developments.

Would we buy there? Maybe. On the positive side it has a great town we could walk to every day and a huge lake nearby. The people seem friendly and houseprices are pretty good. It is closer to the highway and I could get down the island and on my way to Vancouver quickly.

On the negative side you can't see the ocean, and so far, no big grocery store in town. So this town goes into our "maybe" pile for now. So far we have Comox, Courtenay and Powell River in the yes pile and several other towns in the no pile.

Nothing like housesitting to learn about a new area.