Day Three, Mon., July 9: Rolling along the Grand to the Erie Shore
Ancaster to Port Colborne
After a fine large breakfast, we loaded our water bottles with the superb well-water of the Serenity Ranch—living in the city, one easily forgets just how good well water can be—and headed south towards the Grand River, which would take us to the Erie Shore.
Here’s our route to Port Colborne, the southern terminus of the Welland Canal:
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We were now in the St Lawrence and Great Lakes Lowlands proper, easing through gently rolling farmland, and then along largely flat terrain beside the Grand River. The road along the river is in good shape, and on a Monday morning in early July the moderate motor traffic gave us little trouble. This is well-tended farmland with small towns and villages along the river. Happily, Bob’s wrist was much improved, and the gentle terrain imposed no undue strain.
In the little village of York, Bob found a shady spot for a mid-morning rest:
The nearby Grand was quite relaxed as well:
The small town of Caledonia, as you might guess, is studded with streets named Argyle, Sutherland, Fife, Forfar, Dundee, and Renfrew. We were, after all, in the domain of “The Scotch” of southern Ontario, a couple of counties east of the home turf of their most famous son and chronicler, John Kenneth Galbraith. A.E. Jones Bakery, on Argyle St., provided good mid-morning coffee and baked goods for a very modest sum.
Further southeast along the Grand in the village of Cayuga, Graham and Bob scored take-away lunch sandwiches at The Carolinian, a quiet cool bistro which also affords excellent local fruit juices. Outside, a tub of flowers brought a rich splash of colour to the sidewalk:
The placid river and the unhurried civility which the small centres offered to travelling cyclists belie a less tranquil history, however: land bordering the Grand was, and remains, contested terrain. Unresolved land claims remain within a complex triangular relationship among the British Crown (today, the Governments of Canada and Ontario), indigenous peoples, and the descendants of 19th-century European settlers. The issues go back two centuries and more, to the years following the United States’ war of independence and the subsequent war of 1812-14. No-one drew them to our attention, however, as we continued on our way towards the Erie shore.
We paused for lunch under a shady tree at Dunnville, and with a brisk southwesterly at our backs, we reached Lake Erie in mid-afternoon. Pausing again at the Mohawk Marina, near Lowbanks, we soaked our feet in the lake. It was an altogether welcoming sight, clear and cooling, with a slight chop from the southwesterly breeze:
The lakes are not always so. Stan Rogers’ song “White Squall” bears witness to their capricious nature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ4ddAgykfk ("White Squall is set on Lake Huron, but its fiercely changeable weather is a feature of the Lakes. Lightfoot's "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" is probably the more widely known of the two, but I prefer the more personal immediacy of Stan's song.)
The marina’s patio is a few feet above the water. Beside its bar stands a sign saying, “Somewhere, it’s 5 o’clock.” We could easily have stayed a few hours more…
The North Shore Drive into Port Colborne runs past lakeside cottages, many of them modest and a handful quite grand, with the occasional working farm still to be seen. We reached Port Colborne just after 5, after covering the easiest 100 kms of our journey. We asked for advice from passers-by about hotels and motels near the water, but no-one seemed to know of any. A surly cyclist (of all people!—and of course, we're using "surly" here as an adjective, not a proper noun) curtly told Bob to check Tripadvisor. Graham remembered having stayed at a hotel near the canal, so we cycled a short distance further east until we ran out of road. Serious infrastructure and the freighter “Algoma Sault” made it clear that we’d reached where we wanted to be:
Happily, good karma had trumped both Murphy’s law and the grumpy cyclist: on the waterfront street we saw a sign proclaiming the Canalside Eatery and Suites. Greg, its owner and manager, welcomed us while we guessed at his vowels (originally from Welland, he told us, with an admixture of Boston and ‘Straya). There were three comfortable rooms upstairs, one downstairs for the bikes, a good bar, and decent food. I was pleasantly surprised to see Erie perch on the menu—I had assumed that the commercial fishery on Lake Erie was a thing of the past.
We sat and watched the traffic on the canal from fifty yards away. I found myself immersed once again in one of Stan’s songs—here, an imagined conversation between a lock-keeper and the skipper of a freighter laden with “Oriental oils, and tea brought down from Singapore”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0d4cTIPdOo
Today's ride: 100 km (62 miles)
Total: 324 km (201 miles)
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