Peterborough and the Kawarthas Cycling Odyssey – Day 3

When we got up this morning at 7am the sky was very overcast and the ground wet. Shortly it started raining. We ate breakfast and were lingering when the sun came out. We sprang into action, getting into our cycling clothes, choosing a route, and headed out the door.

I loaded the route into Ride with GPS, having downloaded it from the Peterborough and the Kawarthas website I linked to in yesterday‘s blog. Unfortunately, it didn’t have the navigation cues in it. Fortunately, I have a paid version of Ride with GPS which will automatically trace a route and create the cues on the website. I ran back into the house, executed that process on my iPad, downloaded the route, and we were off.

We headed back out along the short route that we did last night. We were following route 1A: Lakes, Rivers and Cafés 45. It was a few kilometres to get to the start of the route.

Peterborough has a lot of picturesque waterfront with the Otonabee River winding through it.

Shortly after we started the route we encountered this signs showing the routes that are on the website and showing the types of signs that we would encounter guiding us as we went.

I was pleasantly surprised at the next turn to see a clearly marked sign.

As we turned onto Hunter Street Dayle‘s front tire got a piece of glass in it and flattened. While the others stopped to fix it I decided that another pair of hands was of no use and did a little tour around the downtown.

Hunter Street has been significantly enhanced by reducing the amount of space for cars and creating space for pedestrians and activities, and painting murals on the road and some of the buildings.

This sculpture called Your Story is a 20 foot tall wooden sculpture installed on the library commons and was designed by architect/artist Patrick Li To evoke a book cover twisting in the wind.

This red brick building is the Market Hall and Clocktower. It was constructed in 1889 and is on the Register of Canada‘s Historic Places. It had a farmers’ market inside and outside the building for decades until the advent of the modern supermarket curtailed business.

It wasn’t long before Dayle was ready to go, but the next turn on our route was for a road that had been completely removed, so we had to navigate around the construction for a few blocks.

The route brought us to a paved tree-lined trail for a while.

Then took us out onto a road with a bike lane until the urban limit.

It wasn’t a busy road, so while we prefer to ride on roads with bike lanes, we were comfortable continuing.

They were quite a few kilometres of climbing as we headed north. The sky got darker and at this corner it started to rain lightly. We stopped briefly to determine whether we should proceed or turn back, being far less than halfway into the route, but decided to proceed. We were all glad we did because the rain only lasted about 15 minutes and the rest of the day the weather was quite delightful.

Even out in the country there were signs at regular intervals guiding us on our route. I was very impressed.

We had considered stopping in Bridgenorth if necessary to avoid the rain but as the rain had stopped we carried on to Lakefield.

We rode up and down the main street of Lakefield looking for a restaurant, having identified a possibility by the trail that we were going on after lunch, but wanted to see what else was available.

We stopped at a Greek restaurant that had a patio but they told us the patio was closed and refused to serve us outdoors so we left.

I saw this pretty flower shop as we cycled back to the first restaurant we saw.

Lakefield had a few nice red brick buildings. The one on the left is the visitor center, and the one in the centre is the library.

We had lunch at a restaurant called Canoe and Paddle. They had a nice patio behind the building. The food was good, but took a while to come, and I was almost nodding off by the time it arrived. Lunch re-energized me and we rode along the canal back south towards Peterborough.

Trent University campus is split in half by the canal with a bridge connecting the two sections. It has a lot of the buildings of the brutalist architectural style. I quite like it. There are also some new modern buildings that fit well with the existing ones. It was quite an interesting campus with the two parts divided by the canal and the bridge connecting them.

It was also quite lively compared to some of the campuses I have been on over the last two years during Covid.

There was a bi-directional cycle track adjacent to the University that was very comfortable to ride that lead us to a bridge over the canal and then the Rotary Greenway which took us back to downtown Peterborough and home.

The Share the Road organization evaluates communities who apply, for how bicycle friendly they are. Brampton is a bronze community. Peterborough is a silver community and the difference is quite dramatic. There are a lot of recreational trails, and on road cycling infrastructure. Some of the streets with on road cycling on infrastructure also have multiuse paths in the boulevard along side to give people options where to ride depending on their comfort level. The wayfinding is excellent.

We returned in time to swim in the Otonabee River behind the house.

The ride was just shy of 60km today, and while I still have a small amount of swelling in my ankle, I only had a few minor twinges of pain. I feel very fortunate that it was worse than it turned out to be.