From Adolphustown, the Waterfront Trail continues eastward along the St Lawrence towards Kingston, Gananoque, Cornwall, and eventually Montréal, but I chose to take a different route, angling north-east inland towards the Rideau Canal waterway between Kingston and Ottawa. I would stop for the night in Delta, a village on Lower Beverley Lake, about 120 kms SW of Ottawa. I followed quiet tarmac and gravel back roads through well-tended farmland north of Adolphustown to Odessa. North of the 401 I made an easterly arc toward CR 11, the north-south Battersea Road linking Kingston, Battersea, and the canal locks at Jones Falls, the height of land between Kingston and Ottawa.

The weather had been getting warmer through the week, and it continued to do so. With a nice tailwind building behind me as the temperature rose into the mid-20s, I made good time. I stopped for lunch at the estimable Glenburnie Grocery, at the junction of the Old Perth Road. There were fresh local apples on offer, Paula Reds, and they too were superb—crisp and tart.

CR 11 leaves the marginal farmland just north of Kingston and takes a cyclist into the up-and-down hills of the Rideau Lakes. The dwellings are modest—it has long been, and remains, so hard to make a decent living here—although there a handful of much more handsome places, recently built. The old village of Battersea sits beside a creek which leads west into Loughborough Lake. Its marina remains a mooring site for fishing and pleasure boats, and offers a shady spot for a picnic lunch, but seems to be quietly fading away:

Heart

0

Comment

0

Link

Log in to comment or reply

With the continuing southwesterly tailwind perfectly matching my northeast bearing, the ride through the rollers north of Battersea was easy enough. At Jones Falls, I turned east towards the village of Lyndhurst, with my campground at Delta only another 15 kms further along. A cyclist appeared in my mirror, going a bit faster than I was, so I waved him by. But, he wasn’t wholly sure of his direction—he was coming from a cottage on a lake 20 kms to the west, and was part-way through a 50-km loop—so we rode together for several kilometres. I noticed that he was riding a Bertrand, a bike built by the local Gatineau shop, GM Bertrand, and complimented him on it. Christian (his name) is, it turns out, originally from Montréal, and has been living in Ottawa since the mid-1980’s—about 500m from my place!  Such a small world.  We exchanged phone numbers and parted at Lyndhurst, Christian to get back to his cottage, while I stopped at Petra’s Place, a very good take-away spot. There, I bought a big salad with a side of cheese curds from the local factory at Forfar—the steady diet of carbs and protein on the road had left me desperate for leafy greens.

I reached the campground at Lower Beverley Lake Park in Delta with plenty of time for a leisurely set-up, found a grassy, well-treed site, and…was immediately engulfed by hordes of mosquitoes. WTF?? It’s mid-September, for Pete’s sake, what are mozzies doing here, and now?? Of course I hadn’t brought any bug dope, nor my veil—why would I do that? It’s mid-September, for Pete’s sake. Muttering and grumbling, I threw my tent together, chucked my sleeping gear inside, fled into the nearby showers, and then dived back into the tent. So much for a relaxed evening meal in the last rays of the sun. I wolfed down my greens in the tent, loving every minute. Food in the tent is against all my established rules, but bears are rare here, and my food bag went back into the washroom for protection against resident raccoons. I guess the mozzies so late in the year are a product of an exceptionally wet summer, and our bizarre-but-wonderful September temps in the mid-to-high 20s.