peterborough to cobourg

once a year i ride my bicycle down to my mum's home in cobourg.

i see her more often than that, but this is a ride.

which means it takes extra effort.

so there's a form of satisfaction in not only getting there, but getting back home.

leaving my own family is always hard.

but then there's the open road, a bicycle propelled and steered by myself.

so the trade-off of a small amount of misery for a large amount of happiness works out - eventually.

to get to cobourg means crossing lots of long rolling hills. if you look at these two photographs, you should know that the hills in the distance are the height of land also known as the oak ridges moraine.

there are many other steep climbs and racing descents before i even get there.

riding almost entirely through countryside. the road is fairly quiet and you can hear the birds, the crickets, cows, the odd bit of farm machinery, the wind rushing past your ears,

and of course the sound of the tyres on the pavement.

and then the scenery does change abruptly when you enter the ganaraska forest.

there's a rich hush about the rows upon rows of conifers.

and then magically after a long climb around a sweeping bend you get your first glimpse of lake ontario

(it's just right of centre in the image).

on the africycle ride, bike buddy michael prepared me for this moment.

it's so simple,

this matter of the sharing of the very simplest and most astonishing joys.

and then before you know it you're in port hope.

in port hope there's a lovely coffee shop called dreamers

where you can get a really good americano and a crazy cookie (yep that's what they're called)

that like many baked goods, tastes a lot better than it looks!

nicely fueled up it's back on the road and across the bike lane beside highway two to cobourg!

here's the google map link for my ride from peterborough to cobourg.

the pacer

in the last week of july i visited prince edward island with my family.

it's the first trip we've taken like this as a family.

you see, we always travel with other families but this time we went on our own.

prince edward island is beautiful.

visually beautiful and beautiful in the way that places can be that have somehow managed to retain their innocence - an informed innocence -

but an innocence that has much to do with life as it was lived some time ago.

the place we stayed was just outside a little community called french river.

here's french river.

of course, i didn't have a bike there and when i mentioned this to the gentlemen who we had rented our cottage from he took me over to his barn assuring me that somewhere inside its dark and musty depths was a bike. actually, there were two bikes as it turned out.

he hauled the one nearest to him out for a look see.

it's a pacer!

a ten-speed pacer!

in the light of day - which i think it was seeing for the first time in nearly two decades or more - it was covered in leaves, cobwebs going back generations ad infinitum, mud and of course rust.

i pushed off what i could and wiped it down.

after clearing off most of the obvious detritus,

i tried to roll it along the ground but the front brakes had seized and rusted shut.

so with his permission i gave the brakes a kick and sure enough - kachoing! - they parted enough to allow the wheel to move, catching once every rotation as the wonky wheel swivelled from side-to-side.

here are the front brakes, temporarily released from their rusty purgatory.

the gear changers had long ago given up any intention of working so the derailleur was stuck in a gear that made riding on anything other than flat ground and with a good push start nigh on impossible.

but it was a bike!

i did try one abortive attempt at riding it.

sadly and predictably, it was just not workable.

the brakes didn't actually work - front or rear.

as i mentioned earlier, the gears didn't work, and the owner suggested that i carry a humungous

floor pump with me to ensure that the tyres remained inflated!

so back it has gone to the barn . . . .

i feel a little sorry for it actually.

bike ride to the liftlock

it's strange that you can live somewhere for a very long time and not go see one of its main attractions.

i bet i'm not alone in that experience.

for example, in this town we have the peterborough liftlock.

it's the highest hydraulic liftlock in the world - big news if you're into hydraulic liftlocks (which i'm not!) -

but actually very cool to watch in action.

so the other day i decided that i had to see this thing at work.

here's what i saw.

i.
ii.
iii.
iv.

what's amazing to know is that there are 1700 tons of water in those containers going up and down.

that's a whole lot of water!

park a few boats inside and there's a lot of stuff going up and down.

the boat in the pictures - the white one coming down the right-hand side - is a sidewheeler tour boat that cruises around the local area waterways.

well worth the bike ride over to see!

here's the google map for hardy souls wanting to make the journey.