Here is our route for the day:

After an early breakfast at The Market Café, we headed north and west from Port Colborne to the Welland River.  The River formed part of the first Welland Canal, built in the 1820’s.  As we followed the easy riverside terrain for an hour or so, early clouds gave way to clear skies.  We worked against a slight headwind, pleased that it was nowhere near as brisk as yesterday’s tailwind.  We passed small riverside settlements from the 19th century—little more than crossroads now—with names like O’Reilly’s Bridge and Becketts Bridge.  

(The name “O’Reilly’s” had me wondering:  Why not “O’Reillys’ "?  Surely the building and financing of the bridge was the work of more than one person?  As Brecht once asked, “When Caesar marched on Gaul, did he go alone?”  One assumes that the singular O’Reilly of the title was the man of the family, that being the naming convention of the day.  What then of the missus and the kids? 

Pausing on the bridge, Graham and I speculated about the conversations round the O'Reillys' supper table:

Eileen:  “Will ye stop your dreamin’ about the bridge, Michael, an’ attend to the cows and the chickens in the here and now?” 
Michael:  “But Eileen, ‘tis just a hundred pounds I need, for the timber and the stones for the piers.  Could ye not be chargin’ your customers a wee bit more for their beer?  The tolls from the bridge will surely free us from the cows an’ the chickens.”
Eileen: “A wee bit more?  Don’t be daft, Michael.  You know the constabulary, they’d like nothing better than to close down me shebeen.”) 

Wellandport, where we stopped for a mid-morning snack, was a larger village, as befits a onetime port.  Its café was cool and spacious, and well stocked with the essentials—Nanaimo bars and date squares, juice, ice cream and coffee. 

We took full and grateful advantage, although I had an unplanned “Oh, dear…” moment:  A sign on the door announced, “We are changing our hours,” and listed the new hours.  After paying and thanking the youngster at the counter for my snacks, I said, “I’m sure I’m not the first person to suggest this, but you know, management could headline the sign about the hours, ‘Our times they are a-changin’. ”  She looked at me blankly, and I thought, “Jeez, that didn’t work.  I’ve just committed, and probably am, an anachronism…”

Outside, we met a couple of touring cyclists, their Surly and Rocky Mountain bikes well loaded. They were from Manhattan, headed to Astoria and Vancouver.  We chatted, and wished them well.  They asked Bob about their planned route northwards—via Highways 20 and 6 to Tobermory on the Bruce, and thence to Manitoulin and The Soo.  Bob advised them to avoid both roads—the traffic and the lack of paved shoulders made them miserable for cyclists.  “But we’re from Noo Yawk,” they said.  That sounded like a non sequitur to me—I rode quite a bit in Manhattan some time back, and given the choice, I’d steer well clear of 20 and 6…  Bob later heard from them from near Saskatoon, though, so they must have managed that particular challenge.

Later that morning, once more seeking a spot for lunch, we waved down two cheerful roadies from the neighbourhood.  They advised us to go to Highland Markets, just beyond the nearby crossroads for Fulton.  Their advice was out by several concession roads, but we eventually (and for me, not a moment too soon) reached Highland Markets.  There, you can get a good lunch—soup, pizza, and fresh cider—all for the modest sum of $8.

We chose to head into the greater Hamilton/Burlington area to find accommodation.  This would make our routing for the following day easier—Graham would continue eastwards to Toronto via the Lake Ontario shore, while Bob and I would curl north towards Orangeville, Alliston, and then Orillia.

From Highland Markets, we rode north to Ridge Road, which runs east from Hamilton along the ridge of the Niagara Escarpment.  Despite the haze, Toronto was visible, some 50 kms to the north across Lake Ontario:

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We wheeled through the steep switchbacks down the side of “The Mountain”, as it’s generously known, thankful not to be climbing them.  After a gross and noisy but thankfully brief interval on the Service Road of the QEW (the Toronto-Hamilton-Niagara autoroute), we connected to the Waterfront Trail for a beautiful and peaceful ride along the lakeshore, past Hamilton, under the Burlington Skyway, and into Burlington proper.  Once again, we had some difficulty finding accommodation.  There was nothing on the waterfront, and the Holiday Inn, in the ‘burbs, was elusive—neither hotel staff downtown, nor motorists at gas stations, quite seemed to know its whereabouts.  We eventually reached it, and found good beer, a good meal, ample space in our rooms for the bikes, a sizeable pool, and the replay of the France-Belgium semi-final game, earlier in the day.  Not only that, but Bob managed to get a very good deal from the desk staff, an initial $139 per room whittled down to an even hundred by judicious use of CAA and seniors’ discounts.