Hamilton – Day 4

I didn’t see Ralph overnight, but when I came out of the bedroom this morning, he was sitting in the office and let me come in to pet him. He seem to enjoy the company, and ate when I put down his food.

I cooked myself breakfast, and then walked one minute to an independent coffee shop, called the Ark and Anchor to get a latté to take back to the apartment. It was good and it’s a cute shop. I love just being able to walk out of the apartment and be so close to so many amenities.

Patti arrived just after lunch and we headed to First Ontario Place so she could visit a colleague of hers.

I created a 40km loop route back in 2017, and have done it on my own a couple times, and with three other friends, in the past. Patti and I rode that today. It’s an excellent route that shows many different aspects of Hamilton.

It was a couple kilometres from the apartment to the start of the route. Bayfront Park is on the Waterfront Trail. These masts and the bullring housing bathrooms at the bottom of the hill give the aspect of a ship.

We rode around Pier 4, which has a Williams Fresh Café on it, but that was too early in our ride to stop.

This sail sculpture on Pier 4 called Rafaga – Unleashed is by a couple that called themselves Dam de Nogales.

We made use of this fun selfie station. The wood at the top had cuts in it so that you could orient your phone in any of four different directions and use the self timer to do a selfie.

Pier 8 has recently had a beautiful new public park built on it. There will be mixed use residential, office and commercial space built on the pair in the future.

There are still steelwork operating in Hamilton owned by ArcelorMittal Dofasco. They are the single biggest industrial CO2 polluter in Ontario. They have received the $900 million grant from federal and provincial governments to to end the use of coal in their steelmaking. Stelco just sold all its Hamilton property – 800 bayfront acres — to a developer that will now lease back 75 acres to the steelmaker for ongoing operations.

This is the HMCS Haida, a national historic site. It served in the navy from 1943 to 1963.

This is a new performance space at Pier 8.

Here’s some more colourful street art we encountered today.

Lester Paloma was still fixing up his mural and we stopped to chat.

We then use the Escarpment Rail Trail to climb the mountain. It’s about 8 km from Corktown to Albion Falls. It’s a very gentle climb. This crosswalk/crossride has been put in on the escarpment rail trail at Wentworth, which makes this intersection much safer.

Someone had dumped a couch on the other side of the intersection. Perhaps to rest while waiting for the light?

There isn’t a lot of autumn colour yet, but these ivy were a blazing red exception.

This is Hamilton’s last brickyard, which has closed down after 113 years.

There are six sets of city built stairs up the escarpment, and a privately built set. I wrote about meeting Uli, the builder of the private set, here.

This is Albion Falls. The first time I was here we were able to climb down and put our feet in the water, but it’s not allowed anymore.

We then rode along Mountain Brow Road, which used to be four lanes, but is now two lanes with a nice wide multiuse path.

They were excellent views from scenic lookouts along the path.

We stopped at Incline Coffee again.

After my cousin read the blog on Monday, she told me about this mural by the son of a friend of hers, which is very close to where I got coffee yesterday and today. The Spectator wrote about Kyle Joedicke here and the mural here.

Just down the street this whole building has a mural on it.

We passed St. Joseph’s Hospital and Mohawk College.

Then we rode along Scenic Drive, which is very scenic with lovely homes and lots of trees.

We then used the Chedoke Radial Trail to descend the mountain.

At one point there’s an enormous Bailey bridge bridging the gap of a waterfall.

The Hamilton Brantford Rail Trail now has raised crossings, near McMaster which makes it much safer for cyclist and pedestrians.

We rode through McMaster. This is the Life Sciences building, which is getting a new greenhouse complex.

This was a very busy intersection as we left the campus.

This art deco home on Longwood Road had a very interesting addition put on a few years ago.

At Princess Point there is a canal between the highway and the park. People skate on it in the winter. It is currently being dredged because the city of Hamilton was served a Ministry the Environment Order as a result of sewer overflow discharge that occurred from 2014 to 2018. The city was fined, and it was quite a scandal because they delayed sharing their findings with the public until the Hamilton Spectator published a report on the event. It was dubbed Sewergate.

This fishway is has been built to protect native species and prevent invasive species from travelling into the marsh.

The trail runs under the 403, the train tracks, and York Boulevard here. There is also a set of stairs up to York Boulevard. There was a scene in The Handmaid’s Tale filmed here.

We had a nice tailwind as we rode across the top of the mountain. We were anticipating a headwind as we returned across the waterfront, but despite the waves on the bay, the wind wasn’t too bad with the trees often blocking it.

This is the West Harbour GO station.

Hamilton is building a lot of bi-directional cycle tracks. This is the one on Bay Street. In some places it has a separate light cycle for cyclists to go straight, while drivers have a red light, and vice versa. This makes it much safer. This is common in Montreal.

The presence of a new stranger didn’t seem to set Ralph back and he’s been interacting with us this evening.

We cooked fish and had some prepared salads for dinner.

Patti had been knitting while I wrote the blog. Tomorrow we will ride to Caledonia.