The day was forecast to be 32 degrees with a humidex of 42 and thunderstorms at 2pm so we decided to get an early start of 730 AM. Once again , David and Dayle kindly picked up breakfast and delivered it to my room. I was able to eat it while I decided what to take in my panniers on my bike, and packed the rest into my suitcase and loaded it into the car, which we left in the parking lot of the Leamington motel to which we will be returning, tomorrow night. As it turned out, the motel owner was away when we were ready to go, so we had to phone him and wait for him to come back, and we finally pulled out at 7:55 AM.
Pumping up our tires.
We headed south toward the lake on the Greenway Trail which is reminiscent of the Caledon Rail Trail; the trail has good signage, and is fairly smooth, with lots of shade.
This is the third time I have cycled with panniers. I think they are a bit heavier than the first two times as I am carrying my iPad so I can blog. I found it a bit challenging at first on the trail, but got used to them over the day.
Thanks so much to Jim for lending them to me for the summer. It’s great to be able to try them out and get a feel for them before deciding what to buy.
Kingsville looked like quite a pretty town and had a restaurant in an old train station at the side of the trail and an excellent bike repair station with a pump with a gauge and could pump both Shraeder and Presta tires. We also passed many wineries.
At the south end of Kingville we turned to follow the lake. It was a picturesque road, but there has been a lot of flooding. New homes were being built, or have been built recently, backing on the lake. I would not consider building so close with floods becoming increasingly common.
We stopped at a fruit stand for some raspberries. They were growing chrysanthemums with drip irrigation.
We also saw several quilt blocks on barns.
We needed the bathroom at Colchester so stopped at Garfield’s. We didn’t really need anything to eat or drink but decided to buy some drinks and toast rather than just sneaking in, using the bathroom and leaving. However our business did not seem to be appreciated so we wished we hadn’t bothered purchasing anything.
There are a crazy amount of mayflies down here and one of the cars in the parking lot was covered.
We also saw one of the craziest bike paths I have ever seen, which was the sidewalk painted green with bike symbols on it. It was also periodically covered with mayflies. Needless to say we stuck to the road.
We saw large wind turbines, but not as many as we saw further east on Erie last year, I think.
About 6 km after we left Colchester, Wayne realized he had lost one of his earbuds and turned around in a, fortunately successful recovery attempt, thus riding 8km further than the rest of us today.
The Detroit River as we approached Amherstburg was quite picturesque.
We stopped at Tim’s in Amherstburg for lunch. Dayle provided each of us with a water absorbing beads filled neck tie which helped a bit with the heat today. Every time I took a drink I also dribbled some water in the neck tie.
Leaving Amherstburg, we encountered a lane on one side of the road that was meant for bidirectional bike and pedestrian traffic, separated from the car lanes by a rumble strip. It was challenging crossing the strip when there was debris or blockage in the bidirectional lane and I would not have been riding my bike in it facing traffic had I been going in the opposite direction.
Some interesting sights in/near River Canard:
At the 401 we saw this great piece of cycling infrastructure.
And this artwork in the centre of a roundabout.
Earlier in the day I had seen a sign for a window washer with the tagline “No peeking”, which made me laugh, but I had just taken a picture and started riding again so didn’t want to stop. Just after the roundabout Wayne pointed out the van belonging to the window washer in the driveway of one of the homes and I took a picture of him with his van.
There was a bikelane at St. Clair college that took us right to the dorm where we are staying and another great piece of art in a roundabout.
It was nice to arrive a bit earlier at our destination today. We decided to eat dinner at Eatery 101, a student operated restaurant which gives students the opportunity to cook and serve in support of the program they are studying. The meal was excellent and very economical. It also meant we didn’t have to get on our bikes and get sweaty again riding to a restaurant off campus. Win-win.
Discover more from Lisa Stokes
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Ewwww those mayflies!
No kidding. Fortunately they are harmless