Bike to Meaford – Day 3 – Blue Mountain to Meaford to Stayner

The day started cool and overcast, but there was no rain falling, or in the forecast.  These units with a full kitchen, two queen beds – one in a loft, and two bathrooms, were quite reasonable for a group of four.

img_1487-1img_1489-1

The Thai restaurant where we ate last night was on the same property and a very short walk from our unit, but there was nowhere to eat breakfast so we packed up and biked to Blue Mountain Village. The whole village was nicely decorated for autumn. There were few people about.

img_1493img_1499

We had a feast for breakfast to fuel our ride.

20190916_085521img_1496

Unfortunately, as we finished breakfast it had started to rain.  Fortunately, we still had our garbage bags from Day 2 and pulled them out again.  There were quite a few stores where we could have purchased rain gear, but the garbage bags had protected us well from rain and wind on Day 2, so we stuck with them.

img_1500img_1501

Dayle’s feet were very cold on Day 2 so she took the opportunity to go shopping for wool socks, something she had failed to pack.

img_1513

As Patti and I sheltered from the rain under the overhang in front of Columbia, I noticed that the forecast showed a high of 21 degrees and no precipitation.  Here is Patti gesturing to the TV screen shown in the following picture.  It didn’t show up the the picture with Patti due to reflections.

img_1521img_1520

Shopping done, we backtracked past our accommodation to a lovely road descent that took us to Craigleith on the shore of Georgian Bay.

20190916_103834

Most of the day was spent on well marked rail trails with an excellent surface of stone dust and aggregate. It was tiring though. as even though it is flat, or gradually climbing or descending, there is more rolling resistance on the trail, than on the road.

img_157020190916_104537

There was wayfaring signs at every crossing.  Most of the roads that we crossed were quite quiet and there were long distances on the trail between roads.

img_1522

We spent quite a bit of time at Thornbury at the fish ladder near the ruins of an old mill.  We saw large fish in the river, but didn’t actually see any fish climbing.

img_1529img_1533

Stretch break.

img_1534

Seen in the backyard of a house from the trail.

img_1544

The rain has stopped and it has started to warm up.  Dayle strips off her rain gear to reveal her beautiful new socks.  I laughed when I first saw them as I thought they read “WTF Snow”, so even though they actually read “Let it snow”, they will forever be “WTF Snow” socks to me.

img_1549

The original plan for the day was to have coffee in Meaford (at 25km) and lunch back at Blue Mountain Village (50km), but we were so slow due to using the rail trail and being tourists that we ended up having lunch and coffee in Meaford at McDonalds. Here we are under a lovely forest canopy, just south of Meaford heading back south.

img_1558

We didn’t see much of Collingwood today, other than busy highway 26, as it was getting quite late and we wanted to get to our accommodation in Stayner.  Even in small towns the drivers behave badly with one driver almost clipping my panniers and a passenger in another vehicle yelling, “Share the road” followed by expletives. We were happy to get back on the trail south of Collingwood.

img_1573

This lovely fellow greeted us as we arrived at our accommodation. It was a farm with horses, miniature horses, goats and chickens, many of them rescues. The owner took us around and talked about the animals before showing us to our rooms. She told us the story of Norman, a 27 year old miniature horse, who is a “felon”.  He escaped from the farm and made his way to Tim Horton’s in town, about 2km away.  The police were called and used their belts to put around him and lead him back home.

When we left for dinner, the border collie did his best to round us up and keep us on the property, running back and forth in front of our bikes to try to get us to turn back toward the farmhouse.  It was quite the adorable performance.

img_1583img_1586

The place had a Paris theme and was very eclectically decorated.  The owner was lovely.  Unfortunately, the mattresses left something to be desired.

img_1590

Someone rented the library for a wedding last weekend.

20190916_185746

There was an indoor pool and hot tub in which Dayle and I relaxed after dinner at a bar called Friends.  The food was good and the service friendly. It was a long day.  We didn’t head out for dinner until after 7pm.

20190916_185829

The bathroom was quite unique.

20190917_075440

The outside looked like a little French village square.

20190917_08030520190917_080335_hdr

img_9411


Discover more from Lisa Stokes

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.