Manitoulin Cycling Odyssey – Day 7

Rain was forecast all day today, with more in the afternoon than in the morning, for our final day on the island, so we decided to get an earlier start. We chose South Baymouth as our destination, an 86 km round trip ride from the cottage. Dayle and I decided to drive to Providence Bay to start to decrease our distance to 64 km.

We parked and unloaded the bikes . The guys weren’t in sight yet, but the mosquitoes were so bad we decided to ride toward them just as they came around the corner. Perfect timing.

The sky was threatening and the guys had a bad headwind heading south. We had a 21 km ride east, but the road was closely enclosed by woods most of the way and the strong crosswind was only noticeable when we crossed an occasional open farm field.

Many communities and individuals make great autumn displays. This one even included pandemic masks on their mannequins. Even though there haven’t been any cases of Covid19 on the island, everywhere we have been we have seen good compliance. Restaurants whose patios we used requested our contact information in case it was needed for contact tracing.

When we reached Tehkummah, where we planned to head south to South Baymouth, we discovered another new tar and chip road. Wayne talked to a local to discover it runs all the way to the port so we decided to take a longer, but smoother route, part of which was on Highway 6 with it’s excellent paved shoulders. The headwind on Highway 6 was relentless, but manageable and made for an amazing tailwind on the way back.

I remember gas stations that looked like this were ubiquitous when I was young. I haven’t seen one for decades. This one was on Highway 6 in South Baymouth.

We found a restaurant called The Pierside with a patio, right opposite the where the Chi-Cheemaun Ferry docks. I had the whitefish fish and chips, for I think, the fifth time. It was delicious.

As we ate the sky became more threatening. We had to put on an extra layer to stay warm while eating. We headed off hoping to stay ahead of the rain. Wayne checked radar and there were bands of rain north of us and south of us. At one point we heard thunder. But as we rode north we warmed up and had to remove layers again.

We stopped briefly at a lookout over South Bay where we discovered the water levels are very high this year.

Eventually the sun came out and we started to think/hope that we would avoid the rain, not only for the day, but for the entire week.

At one point we came across a lovely autumn scene that we stopped to photograph to discover a very curious group of cattle who wanted to observe us. We saw many herds over the week. Some we startled into flight, some were indifferent and a few were curious.

The colours continue to improve day by day, with more and more pockets of red, yellow and orange in the green.

We avoided the rain all day, as well as the strong winds. It was a great final day to a great week. I would highly recommend cycling on Manitoulin Island.