Headwinds, Horseflies and Loose Gravel: Notes on cycle-camping with Freddie
the Mercury
(2nd & final instalment)
I made a relaxed start to the next day, departing around 9:30 after a breakfast of hot cereal with dried fruit and tea. Rechecking my route on the Osmand app on my phone, I reckoned I had half an hour or so of secondary tarmac, followed by about an hour-plus of gravel through the public forest of Montague Township before returning to the farmland west of Ottawa. I had a snack in my handlebar bag—a wrap in foil made the day before, some fruit, and a hardboiled egg. I reckoned to reach Stittsville, a village on the western edge of metropolitan Ottawa by about 1:00, in good time for lunch at a café.
The early stages of my homeward leg followed the script: a half-hour-plus northwards on good secondary tarmac, a fresh breeze on my left quarter (good for the kayaker, I said to myself.) Then, at Nolan’s Corners (the name an echo of Irish settlement in the 19th century—did Nolan work on building the Canal? I wondered) I turned east on fast hard-packed gravel. After several kms, I came to Pinery Road, my left turn to the north and east – and the story deviated from the script. I eased into Pinery and immediately found myself riding on a layer of loose, freshly-graded gravel over a base of hard-pack: “freshly-graded”, as in, maybe done the previous day, as there were
no vehicle tracks at all to pack down or disperse the gravel. “OK, Freddie,” sez I, “you’ll not have encountered this stuff before. We’ll take our time, no quick movements, and at least there’s no traffic.”
Indeed there was no traffic, beyond one guy coming the other way on a fatbike, well-suited to the surface. Riding on that surface was akin to, I dunno, riding on a layer of irregular marbles. At least there were no corrugations, and no hills – just a few short upgrades as we moved further away from the river, and happily, no downgrades. Knowing that there was hardpack beneath the marbles helped, because I knew I could get some traction if Freddie’s 40mm Supremes could nudge through to the base. Most of the time, they did. I had backed off the pressure in my tires a little after my first day, to 50 PSI at the front and about 55-56 at the rear—that certainly felt more comfortable, and probably improved the bike’s traction as well.
The map had shown just a handful of homesteads along the road, and as I continued, I realized that Pinery Rd was basically a forest access road. Accordingly, the Extenuating Circumstances quickly appeared, in the form of clusters of horseflies, maybe a dozen or more at a time. No worries, sez I to myself, where there are horseflies, dragonflies will follow, Nature will be in harmony, and you can focus on riding through the marbles. Not. In my years of canoeing in parc de la Vérendrye, I never fussed about horseflies, ‘cos there were hordes of dragonflies. Not so in Montague Township Forest: there be no dragonflies in yonder forest, and the horseflies there fly free to feast upon the backs of the hands of cyclists foolish enough to pass through.
All-of-a-sudden, then, the task of maintaining stability, traction and reasonable forward motion without any sudden movements atop the marbles became more complicated: how to do all that with just one hand on the handlebar, whilst the other swats at (and occasionally hits) ravenous horseflies atop the hand on the handlebar? And then, of course, one has to switch hands and repeat.
Well, we made it, and without mishap. But, it took a good 90 minutes, and c’était pas fun, non, pas du tout. And I can’t even recommend the scenery: maybe there really is such a thing as Too Many Spruce Trees. It’s not so much the conifers themselves, y’see, as the wretched horseflies they shelter. Perhaps yesterday’s headwinds (converted to today’s tailwinds) might’ve helped, but who knows? On this day, they had become gentle tailwinds. And horseflies are macho buggers – they
despise weak winds.
Leaving the forestry road and heading for tertiary tarmac and good gravel, my junction was unsigned; looking skyward, I took what I thought was the easterly road that would soon lead to a T-junction that would take me north. Shoulda double-checked my map, duh: after a couple of kilometres, giddy with speed on hard gravel, I did check my map, and, er, retraced my route for my real turn east and then north. No harm done, tho’ I felt like a right chump, and I carried on north towards Stittsville. As I entered farming country again—marginal farming, to be sure—the horseflies duly scattered to the safety of their coniferous lairs. On a mix of hardpack gravel and tertiary tarmac, I paused roadside for a midday snack untroubled by any buzzing flies. Passing through the hamlet of Ashton Station, home to the old and locally famous General Store (now closed
![Sad :(](https://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/Smileys/default/sad.gif)
) and the resurgent Ashton Brew Pub, a few more kms brought me to the rail trail that runs eastward into Stittsville, and eventually, into Ottawa’s west end.
The rail trail was quiet, with just a few riders and hikers west of Stittsville. The surface is reasonably firm and smooth, and the recent rain had laid the dust quite nicely. As the rail trail met Stittsville’s Main Street, I was tickled to find myself next door to a suitable riposte to the horseflies: the Ritual on Main café had a big sign advertising fresh ice cream. A decent cappuccino, a serious butter tart and a hefty double blueberry ice cream made for a good mid-afternoon snack, enough to see me home along the rail trail and the Ottawa River bike path. The trail is a much better way to return to the city than the southern route—and indeed to leave it, so long as a rider wants to go west. The arterial roads are still all around, of course, with their torrent of pickups and the like, but delicate souls like me don’t have to look at the wretched things
Gear and setup of the bike:This was just an overnight mini-tour, and as I planned to eat a couple of meals in cafés en route, I carried only a light camping load:
• Tent and groundsheet, sleeping bag and mattress;
• Clothing (socks, underwear and T-shirt), raingear and rubber camp shoes;
• Stove, cookware, and food for a cooked breakfast and lunch & snacks on the road;
• Phone, sunblock, bug veil and dope, and toiletries, some electronics (storage battery & cables), wallet, keys, sunglasses and backup glasses;
• Tools, spares, clickstand, pump and lock.
Total weight of these items was about 25 lbs. The tent went on top of my rear rack, and the rest I packed into my Arkel Dry-lite panniers on the rear, a Revelate Sweetroll (medium) suspended from the front T-bar, and an Axiom handlebar bag.
The rear rack merits a heads-up footnote:
When I ordered my Mercury frameset, forks and components, I planned to use my spare Tubus Vega rear rack. In my prep for this trip, I was surprised to see that the Mercury has just one threaded hole above each rear dropout. These would accept bolts for rear mudguard stays or a rear rack, but not both – at least, not easily or quickly.
Wot to do? A friend recommended I consider a Tubus Disco rack, which is designed to work with a disc-braked rear wheel, and which mounts via a QR hub skewer. The Disco is not widely available, but I found one online (at a DISCOunt, no less) and it arrived in time for me to mount it on my Mercury. Doing so was reasonably straightforward, but – it didn’t quite “just bolt on, sir”:
• The brake side of the wheel (with the QR lever) required an array of spacers to clear the disc. Happily, my habit of collecting such things meant that I could create the necessary clearance. Having done so, and then checking that I could easily remove the QR skewer, I realized that I wouldn’t look forward to removing the wheel roadside on a rainy night; or indeed on a muddy back road in the daytime.
• Then, mounting my Dry-lites--which I had set up for the Tubus Vega rack—onto the Disco, I discovered that the arched “bridge” between the V-shaped vertical struts on each side of the Disco (which would accept the elasticated hook of each pannier) was about 5 cms closer to the “shelf” of the rack than was its Vega counterpart. That meant that my Dry-lites’ fastening hooks weren’t even close to the tension necessary to hold the plot in place; this, even after maximum adjustment of the straps between the two panniers atop the “shelf” of the rack. Boooo!
And once again, wot to do? A bodge did the trick — elegant in conception, I have to say, if less so in execution: I fastened a small P-clamp around the apex of the V on each side of the rack, and the tensioned hook of each Dry-lite nicely fits into the curvature of the “P”. Et voilà! – functionality restored. [photo #4]
• Of course, there’s followup in the form of a winter project: fit the Vega rack. A closer preliminary look suggests that the Vega and the fender stay clamp will fit together via a single bolt on each side. TBD, and – who knows? – next spring, maybe I’ll have a spare Disco rack for those hankering for one.
Performance of the Mercury in light-touring mode:
The bike was smooth and comfortable, as expected, and entirely at home on tarmac and hard-pack gravel. I’ve done only limited mileage this spring and summer, so I didn’t push myself on this ride. That said, although I was tired at the end of the first day, I felt much better at the end of nearly six hours’ riding on the second day.
My time on the loose gravel of the forestry road was useful (if not much fun), though, because it showed me the limits of my 650B x 1.6” (40mm) Marathon Supremes. I think that particular surface would test most bikes and riders, but tires in the 50 – 60 mm range on the Mercury would likely offer more stability, comfort and confidence. (The rider on the fatbike on Pinery Rd was running tires that looked close to 3.0”.)
All that said, my future touring will almost certainly be on tarmac or good gravel by choice, and in any case, Schwalbe in its inscrutable wisdom makes no wider 650B Supreme than the 1.6” I currently have. So, the issue of wider tires for loose gravel becomes a cow’s opinion (i.e., a mooed point.)
Racks and bags:• Next spring or early summer, I hope, I’ll test the Mercury on a short tour with my preferred setup: Vega rear rack with Arkel Dry-lites, and a lightweight Arkel front rack with lightweight panniers.
• The jury is still out on the Revelate Sweetroll (medium) bag. It weighs only about 12 oz, and easily swallows my rain gear, first aid kit, and so on. It flops around a bit, though, moving fore and aft, thus putting a bit of pressure on the Rohloff’s shifter cables. (This wasn’t an issue on the Raven with its slightly different cable routing.
• On this trip, I didn’t take the Revelate medium frame bag I normally use; instead, I took a large (7 ltr) Axiom handlebar bag, which worked well enough.
• There are a few possible combinations for frame bags and handlebar bags of different sizes, weights, and dimensions, the choice to be made according to the tour, terrain & weather.
So there we are -- first camping impressions, if a bit delayed...
![Sad :(](https://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/Smileys/default/sad.gif)
Comments and questions always welcome, but it may take me a while to reply.