 |
| Our starting point today |
Today we headed to Monkton (Ontario) to ride our next section of the Goderich-To-Guelph multiuse trail (G2G link) to Milverton. This section is about 12 km one way, so about 25 return for us (a bit over 30 with the detour). It was a pretty fall day, kinda cool but we needed to take advantage of the day. The bike ride is also a good excuse for a drive in the country from Bayfield to Monkton. Lots of good colour today in places.
Monkton has a grain-handling depot right in town, common for towns in this rural area.
 |
| Grain gets pumped into the hoppers, and later transferred to large trucks |
 |
| Today some corn was being deposited for later transfer |
The Trail showed some fall colours, as well as views of surrounding countryside:
 |
| Little House on the Prairie |
 | |||||
| A Turkey Vulture checked us for signs of life. We're not ready yet guy! |
Several fields had good-looking hay crops, much more luxuriant than we've been used to seeing when we lived in Grey County, especially for this time of year:
The last G2G sign before getting into Milverton, only 58 km to Guelph now. We'll not likely make it all the way this year:
Coming into Milverton we encountered a detour sign. We knew there was a detour here, but didn't realize it was 4 km to get around a bridge outage. That's the red V on the trail map shown earlier in this post:
After a bite of lunch and riding partway around the detour, we decided to turn back for the day. Because of the detour tour we had covered about 15 km so far today, and were ready to head back.
On the way back we met Doris, a solo rider also on her way to Monkton with her bike, loaded with camping gear:
Doris had left from Monkton yesterday and ridden the Trail easterly to West Montrose, home of a famed covered bridge, where she tent-camped for the night in some rain. That was about a 60 km day for her yesterday, and the same back from West Montrose today. Likely a bit further, since she says she kept getting lost on the detours.
Doris is an experienced cyclist, having often ridden 80-100 km in a day in bygone years, without camping gear. She said she doesn't do that now, as she's not 80 any more - Doris is 81 years young!
She did admit that she found the last mile back to Monkton pretty tough today, as a partial headwind had picked up.
Farmers were hard at work on the fields today:
 |
| Sprayer at work |
 |
| Combining corn |
 |
| End of the row |
 |
| Heading back to dump the full hopper |
A great day to do more bike riding!
ReplyDeleteWow,,, Doris is amazing!
What a great story!
Glad you both are enjoying the fall weather!
You guys certainly don't sit around! I'm impressed! If you up your game to 60km per day you'll catch up with Doris! Those bikes are proving useful.
ReplyDeleteDoris sure made us feel feeble!
DeleteYou folks are doing well at getting that trail covered. That's quite amazing about Doris. I think that lady needs a documentary movie about her life looked into. If she's out there doing that at 80 what else has she done in the previous 8 decades.
ReplyDeleteI'd bet that documentary would be interesting!
Delete