Whitby Getaway – Day 3

It rained heavily overnight, and was still raining quite a bit when we got up to walk the dog at 7:30, so we delayed over coffee, until the rain tapered off.

We took our time getting ready and having breakfast, to give the roads time to mostly dry up before leaving. We dried our chains off last night, but didn’t oil them, and had some rust this morning, so oiled them before we left.

The plan was to do a shorter day today and explore Brooklin, a Heritage Conservation District in north Whitby.

We travelled on a lovely trail through the Heber Down Conservation Area.

I record all my rides on an app called Strava. It records your precise route and statistics for the ride.

Early in the pandemic I discovered a website called Statshunters. When you authorize the website to use your Strava history it creates a map of all the places you have been.

The tiles divide the world into a grid of 16,384 by 16,384 squares, each one is about 2 km wide. It’s a fun pursuit to try to visit as many tiles as you can using only human power. Statshunters shows you all the tiles you have visited (red if not in your square or cluster), and also the largest square of tiles you have (in blue) and the largest cluster of tiles (green). A tile is in the cluster if you have all the tiles that connect to it.

When I first started looking at my map I had a 9 x 9 square which by carefully planning my rides I have expanded to 24 x 24. My max cluster is 1172 tiles. And I have visited 3320 tiles all together.

The tiles I had in this area date back to my Ottawa to Brampton ride in 2017. The next two screen caps show my map of this area last week and today.

Often when I plan a tile ride I am planning to pick up tiles more than paying attention to what roads or trails I am going on, so sometimes even though I planned the ride, as I ride it I encounter surprises, and generally they’re good. I didn’t realize we were going on this lovely path until we got there.

It has inspired me to ride in places I haven’t been before and to see new things.

Tomorrow we will be doing a large loop around Whitby which left 13 tiles in the centre which I haven’t been through. Tomorrow’s ride will be a longer one so today we decided to do a short one and pick up the centre tiles.

The conservation area had a nice rest area, bike repair stand, and bike rack just before we exited.

There was a stiff direct headwind which made going tough. This is Cindy crossing the 407. Most of the rural roads we were on today had fairly decent shoulders.

When we got to Brooklyn we briefly stopped at the library and recreation centre where they had some cute pennyfarthing bike racks. We made use of the bathrooms and then headed a few kilometres north of Brooklyn into the wind, before turning back and enjoying a wonderful free wheeling ride back down.

The reason we went north of Brooklin was to pick up tiles. Today I got 13 new tiles and traversed 15. Yesterday nine of the tiles out of 20 were new to me, and on Monday five of the tiles out of 24 were new.

We had lunch at the Brooklyn pub which had a nice sunny sheltered patio. We split a wrap, fries, and salad because the portions were large. We saw a few older homes in Brooklyn, but mostly it seems to be new subdivision spurred by the nearby Highway 407.

When we got back into the main part of Whitby we stopped at Panera bread for an “everything but the kitchen sink” cookie and coffee.

Then we explored downtown Whitby. They have a very nice library on Dundas Street.

There is a sculpture out front of Sir William Stevenson, whose nickname was Intrepid. Whitby was home to Camp X, a top-secret World War II spy training school. Stevenson was a Sopwith Camel Flying Ace credited with shooting down 12 enemy aircraft in World War I. He also escaped a prisoner of war camp in 1918. He went on to become an inventor and wealthy businessman. He enhanced a facsimile device that revolutionized the newspaper industry by enabling the wireless transmission of photographs. He was also involved in radio and aircraft manufacturing, steel for auto manufacturing, construction and cement. Winston Churchill requested that Stevenson run the British security coordination from North America.

The objectives of camp acts included training students in sabotage, subversion, deception, intelligence gathering, lock picking, explosives handling, radio communications, and coding/decoding, recruitment methods for the resistance movement, the art of silent killing, and unarmed combat. Over 500 agents were recruited, trained, and sent from Camp X in Whitby to be assigned to various covert missions.

The former site of camp X is now known as Intrepid Park. We unknowingly rode through it yesterday. I recalled as we read about The Man Called Intrepid that we saw a sign about Camp X when we rode past the site in 2017 on the way home from Ottawa.

We then went looking for a building where Cindy’s husband acted in a film, Saving Dinah. It was the built in 1854 and was a trial court and a meeting place for County Council.

We then rode over to the Trafalgar Castle school, a private school for girls. Tuition starts at $26,000, and boarding fees are another $64,000. The school was built in 1859.

After leaving the school we passed this cute tiny home in someone’s backyard. I’m not sure if someone actually lives in it because dwelling in accessory structures is not permitted in Whitby, but it looks too nice to just be a shed.

The weather was lovely and warm when we returned so we finished our ride with gin and tonic on the porch.

Unfortunately the robin who has made a nest on the light behind us wasn’t thrilled with our use of the porch.

We had steak for dinner with Cindy‘s nephew and Cindy just twisted my arm into having a bowl of ice cream for dessert since I had brewed coffees rather than lattes today and needed the calcium.

One of the great things about riding a bike a lot is not needing to worry too much about what I eat.

Take note the name of the wine on the bag left for us by Cindy’s sister.


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