on this the sixth and final day of my ride, i had mixed feelings. as i mentioned earlier in this travelogue, there's the wish to just keep on going and then also the wish to see family and to step away from the change in routine. it's a real conundrum to be sure.
following the waterfront trail's official route out of cobourg was easier said than done as part of it is under construction and unless you are intimately familiar with cobourg’s winding, criss-crossing streets you would have no clue how to regain your hold on the trail. as it was i rode a kind of zigzag route through some suburban streets lined with houses that i would say judging by their architecture probably dated back to the sixties. eventually,i carried my bike across a grass verge and out onto the road i wanted to be on. then i picked up hwy. 2 across to port hope. i left cobourg under a sunny blue sky with fluffy white clouds and best of all, my dad had said before i left that the weather service had declared this a rain and thunderstorm free day!
i had turned down the generous offer of a ride home with the bike in the trunk. you see, the reality of the route from port hope up to peterborough is that there are a lot of hills. the route is basically a climb as you ascend the old shoreline of glacial lake iroquois and then the oak ridges moraine and then the drumlin fields. it’s a fifty kilometre journey but it’s the hills that provide the challenge. for the history of lake iroquois have a look here, here, and here.
port hope sits at an altitude of 246 feet (75 m) above sea level. peterborough is 190.3 metres (roughly 620 feet) above sea level. not a giant climb but enough that you feel some of the inclines more than others. however, i really wanted to complete the entire circuit without assistance and so i decided to finish the thing properly.
here are a couple of pictures taken from hwy. 2 as it passes through port hope and leads out of town . . .
the road was very very busy especially with trucks and for the most part there is no paved shoulder so you sit in the thirty centimetres or so of paved lane that sits on and to the right of the painted line at the side of the road. more than once i simply pulled off as trucks coming towards me and from behind me converged. pulling off is also a good excuse to take a breather and look around.
here’s one such view . . .
another time i stopped and looked up to see one . . .
and then two hawks circling overhead . . .
did they know something?! i got back on the bike and moved on, looking over my shoulder to see if they were following and of course they weren’t. i guess they figured there was still some life left in the old guy!!
the rest of the ride was uneventful and amazingly the sky managed to stick to the weather report until about twenty minutes out of peterborough when the clouds gathered and decided to let loose one last bit of rain on me. i couldn’t believe it! by that point i was so close to home that i motored on through it. the final hill into peterborough after you pass through fraserville, pass under highway 115, cross a set of railway tracks is a bruiser. it is seemingly interminable and yet is mercifully provided with two lanes and a bit of a paved shoulder so that traffic can easily pass the struggling cyclist.
i finally made my way up that hill and rode along hwy 28 to lansdowne, hung a right and made my way through the winding streets of west end peterborough to my home where i was greeted by neighbours and family and at which time i hoisted a little bottle of henkell trocken to celebrate having ridden four hundred and fifty kilometres alone through south eastern ontario . . .
a last look at the sky which cleared as soon as i rode up the driveway . . .
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