Peterborough and the Kawarthas Cycling Odyssey – Day 7

Our final day seemed to arrive so quickly even though, at the beginning the week it seemed like we had so much time stretching ahead of us. It was so cold today, 3° Celsius, that Wayne had to put on sleeves! The rest of us lawyered up for warmth.

We had breakfast, packed our bags and coolers, and loaded everything into the cars. We arranged with the owners to leave the cars in the driveway while we did a local tour of Peterborough. We also planned to visit a coffee shop owned by someone Dayle knows.

I use a website called Statshunters to create a personal heat map of all the places I have ridden my bike since 2013, when I started recording my rides, and also to see what tiles I have ridden my bike through.

The world has been divided into a grid of 16,384 x 16,384 squares each about a mile square. The goal is to use human power to get each of the tiles. I discovered this website at the beginning of the pandemic and used it as inspiration to ride places where I haven’t been before. There are three measurements. Max square which is the largest square you can create with connected tiles. When I first looked 2 1/2 years ago my max square was 9 x 9 in Brampton. I have expanded it to 24 x 24.

The second measurement is max cluster. When one of your activity crosses a square it is counted as a tile. If you cross the connected left, right, top, and bottom tiles of a tile it is counted as a cluster tile. The max cluster is based on all the connected cluster tiles. Finally total tiles are simply all the tiles you have crossed. My goal this year is to get my total tiles to 4000.

All of the tiles surrounding Peterborough, and the non-waterfront tiles around Coburg were acquired on this trip. For the final day I planned a 25 km route to pick up tiles we hadn’t crossed in Peterborough, on recreational trails and roads that we hadn’t been on yet.

One of the places we cycled through was Jackson Park. There is a lovely pagoda bridge in the park which was originally constructed in 1895 and restored in 1989 by carpentry students from Fleming College.

We are all cycling advocates in Brampton and Caledon and so are particularly interested in the infrastructure and wayfinding signage we find in the communities we visit on these trips.

You know you’re a cycling nerd when you see a sign like this and stop to admire it and discuss it. We liked the fact that the sign clearly laid out that pedal bikes and mobility scooters are permitted on the path, but not scooter style E bikes or motorized vehicles which should not be used in spaces shared with pedestrians.

Peterborough has a lot of lovely trails in parks that connect to make nice loops.

After about 20 km we stopped at the café Dayle suggested, but it was busy indoors, and had no outdoor seating, let alone seating in the sun, which we needed on this cold morning. Cindy spotted the Dreams Café around the corner, in the sun, that had outdoor seating, so we went there. It had a perfect outdoor covered patio which was protected from the wind yet still sunny. The food was delicious.

Next we visited B!ke, Peterborough’s community bike shop. It was open in 2006 and is a nonprofit, charitable, member-based cycling education and support organization. It is inspirational for those of us involved in recently opening Different Spokes, a community bike hub in downtown Brampton.

With full bellies and warm toes we rode to Millennium Park which has a trail along the Otonabee River waterfront.

We encountered Peterborough‘s inaugural Environmental and Climate Action Expo. It was interesting to see such an event set up on a Friday and well attended. We visited many of the booths including one by B!ke Peterborough. Some of their staff were just arriving back from leading a youth bike ride along the canal.

The Peterborough library has a bookmobile bike.

Peterborough has an environmental park with a permanent building and shelter where there were plants for sale and a large gathering for the expo.

A few kilometres later we arrived back at the house and the end of our trip. This was my eleventh cycling trip, the ninth with David and Dayle, seventh with Wayne, fifth with Cindy. I am so grateful for the wonderful friendships and adventures that I have benefitted from. The personal return of getting involved in volunteering and cycling advocacy in Brampton has been incredibly rewarding.