Whitby Getaway- Day 4

I awoke before my alarm this morning and the sun was shining in the window. Cindy already had the coffee ready and we enjoyed a cup before taking Oakley for a walk. Oakley seems to know all the dogs in the neighborhood, and there seem to be a lot. One particular dog visits and comes right up to the house every day for a treat that is kept in the mailbox.

A cycling advocate that I know from Durham warned me that there might be a “Freedom” Protest at the corner of Garden Street and Rossland. I checked and it wasn’t on our route for the morning but was on a return route for the afternoon.

The morning started at 4°, but felt very warm as we walked Oakley. By the time we left it was 12° with a forecast high of 14°. Again we dressed in layers. We left all the rain gear at home which lightened our load.

We hadn’t gotten very far before we had to pull over and start removing layers as it was already quite warm in the strong sunshine.

We headed east and north and it wasn’t long before we were seeing beautiful pastoral scenes.

The route took us on very lightly travelled country roads.

Yesterday‘s weather forecast was for winds from the north east in the morning and the south in the afternoon, which would have meant headwinds in both directions, but fortunately, by the time we headed out, the winds were already from the south and we had a tail wind helping us up some of the hills.

As we were heading away from Lake Ontario there were a lot of hills to climb. Near Port Perry the land went gradually down towards Lake Scugog.

Port Perry is a busy little town of just under 10,000 residents, with a fairly large, well preserved Main Street, with lots of stores, restaurants, and coffee shops. There was even a bike store there.

The oldest grain elevator in Canada is on the shores of Lake Scugog in Port Perry, and was built in 1874.

We rode along the main street and then over to the marina where we found a small restaurant at which we could place our orders while outside and eat on a patio. It was ideal.

They also had some nice colourful chairs set up to view the marina.

After lunch we cycled back up the main street.

We decided to get coffee and cookies before leaving town because we knew the rest of the route would be mostly rural with no further opportunity for food.

This library building opened in 1935 and was used until the early 1980s when an expansion was needed. However due to flooding of the adjacent Bowling Green the library could not be expanded. Today it houses a financial services business, and a new library was built elsewhere in Port Perry.

The busier roads that we travelled on today had generous shoulders which allowed us to ride side-by-side when traffic was light.

Because of the rolling hills and the crosswinds as we headed west, we were very happy to turn south despite the headwind, to head back into Whitby,. It was mostly downhill but there were a lot of rolling hills that meant we still had a fair bit of climbing even though overall we were travelling downhill towards Lake Ontario. The app I use for planning and navigation, Ride with GPS, has an elevation profile, but it’s not always accurate. We thought we were done climbing at this point but the reality on the road was different from the route profile. It was also quite amusing each time the app mixed up metres and kilometres when telling us the distance to the next turn. There seems to be a bug in the latest update. I haven’t encountered this before.

We found a masked tin man and couldn’t resist stopping to take pictures.

This was another interesting scene which gave us an excuse to stop and catch our breath after a long climb.

We knew we were nearly back home when we cross the 407.

Unfortunately the next road we had to cross was Highway 7 with no traffic light in sight in either direction. It was a few minutes of waiting until there was a long enough clearance of traffic in both directions for us to cross safely.

When we arrived at Garden and Rossland there was no sign of the protest we had been warned about. I’m not sure if it didn’t materialize or it had just finished before we got there.

We rode 71 km today with over 700 m of climbing which is a fair bit on such a distance.

We finish the day with G&Ts with Cindy’s nephew, and ordered ribs, wings, fries, and onion rings for dinner. I was so full when I finished I’m not sure if I’ll have room for ice cream tonight.

Tomorrow we head home using a combination of riding and GO train.