Peterborough and the Kawarthas Cycling Odyssey – Day 4

Today we decided to ride Route 2A: The Cottage Country 80. It’s another ride from the Peterborough and Kawarthas website. Last night I downloaded the ride from the website, and did auto tracing so that we would have voice cues. It was only this morning that I realized I should look for a place for us to have lunch. The website shows places to eat and in this case listed restaurants only in Lakefield and Peterborough. I spent a while on Google Maps trying to find something, but was an unable to find anything at or near the half way of 40 km.

There is a nice multiuse Path along Lansdowne Street.

The first 20 km of the ride from Peterborough to Lakefield were the same as we did yesterday. I chose a different route from the house to Trent University, then we followed the same route from there to Lakefield that we used on the way back yesterday. It wasn’t particularly interesting, but at least we saw a different part of the city.

It can be enjoyable, especially along a pleasant route, riding it in both directions, as you see things you missed the first time.

Here we are back on Nassau Mills Road along the canal.

I didn’t take very many pictures today so Dayle kindly provided me with some of hers which were different from mine. Here we are entering Lakefield.

Since we couldn’t find anywhere to eat after Lakefield we decided to stop in Lakefield for a second breakfast / coffee and treat, and brought along protein bars and nuts to tide us over until we got back home for dinner. The first coffee shop we stopped at was still closed, but there was mural reproduction of Group of Seven artist Tom Thompson‘s “Canada from a Canoe” painting which we discovered, before heading to a coffee shop adjacent to the restaurant where we had lunch yesterday.

It was a good choice with friendly owners and good food.

As we departed Lakefield I couldn’t resist taking a picture of my bike in front of the florist. If you like pictures of my bike in front of things I have an instagram account full of them. 😁

Lakefield has a nice old stone church built in 1853.

North of the town is Lakefield College school which was attended by Prince Andrew.

Once again the route was well signed.

Dayle took this lovely photo of a pond in the trees along one of the rural roads which we traveled. Most of the roads were very lightly travelled by motor vehicles.

Unfortunately, Dayle got another flat. She texted David, who was a little bit ahead with Cindy and myself, to come back to help. Cindy and I stayed where we were, and had the savoury items we had purchased in Lakefield for our lunch to supplement the bars we had brought with us.

We didn’t see a lot of livestock, but there was a field of cattle, and I did see a few fields with a couple horses in each of them.

We did find a convenience store at the gas station in Warsaw where Wayne was able to get some cold drinks. It was across the street from this World War I memorial.

While we were standing there, volunteer firefighters, who can be recognized by the green flashing lights in their private vehicles, converged on the fire station, and shortly thereafter two fire trucks left, sirens blaring.

We cycled a block down the road to the Lion’s Park to sit and have a snack, but it was closed. I took the opportunity to do some stretching as my quadratus lumbarum muscles have been tight. Dayle captured it saying I looked like I was practising my ballet moves.

This church has been converted into a house and is for sale. I looked it up when we got back. It’s beautiful inside and is a mere $725,000. A bargain compared to the price of real estate where we live.

The first half of the ride was generally climbing, but not overly challenging. The second half of the ride was generally descending and there were some lovely descents.

We had to ride about 1.3 km on this dirt road, but it was well packed and smoother than the rail trail we were on the first day. Dayle captured this wonderful picture of the four of us. We are all wearing our Bike the Creek cycling jerseys. Bike the Creek is Brampton‘s signature cycling event and was started by David and Dayle. We all volunteer to make it happen. This year there were over 1300 participants, almost double the number we had in 2019 before taking a two-year pause because of the pandemic.

Cindy cooked us a wonderful dinner. We eat so well on these trips. We initially decided to do a trip in September 2020 on which we stayed in one place and explored the area around the cottage where we were staying. This was to keep ourselves safe because of the pandemic, but it has turned out to be a very relaxing and relatively economical way to explore an area.