Such brilliant stuff -- not everyone's cup of tea, or jelly doughnut, or whatever, but I think they're brilliant. Odd coincidence: tomorrow night, Marcia and I are going to a John Cleese performance. Looking forward to that! should be quite a ride (he said, returning to the thread.) So -
Here's a report and some photos from my only cycle tour this summer, a four-day velosafari in the Madawaska Highlands northwest of Ottawa. I started this past Sunday, Sept. 15, and finished Wednesday evening, Sept. 18. I had ridden this circuit last August, and found it to be a mixture of beautiful landscapes, some very tough hills, and an easy ride in the last two days through rolling farmland closer to the Ottawa River. On this trip, I planned to stay with friends one night, camping on other nights. I took along lunches and snacks, a breakfast and two freeze-dried suppers – there are few villages with cafés along the route, especially in the back country.
I've summarized the route and distances, for those who might be interested to check the map of Eastern Ontario:
> From Ottawa, head a little south of west for about 75 kms, then angle NW to Balderson, and to McDonald’s corners near Dalhousie Lake (less a lake than a reach of the Mississippi River). Campgrounds available. 100 kms +/-
> From McDonald’s Corners, head north and west past Dalhousie Lake and through the small back-country villages of Ompah and Plevna, and then over a very hilly 30-mile stretch to Vennachar Junction, just near Denbigh. My friends Richard and Kate have an old log homestead there. Richard’s grandfather and great-uncle, just boys at the time, helped their parents build the house in 1869. They were a farm family from Silesia in eastern Germany, now part of Poland. Distance: 90 kms more or less.
> From Denbigh, you ride north, up and down some serious hills until you reach the Madawaska River. The Madawaska is one of the major tributaries of the Ottawa River, which at this point is about 100 kms due east as the crow flies. After an easy half-hour cycling east beside the river—very gentle here, but a famous white-water route both upstream and downstream—you meet a long uphill north to Foymount, at about 500 metres the highest village in Ontario. Not very high by the standards of most countries outside the Netherlands, I know, but the 20-km ascent includes three clusters of long, steep and stepped hills, each cluster separated by deep dips. The 500 metres feels like 1500, and the grades are 10-12-14%. So, the 20 kms takes a good 90 minutes. From the top, it’s a looong fast downhill and then an easy 25 km east to the village of Eganville on the Bonnechere River. There are campgrounds in the area. Total distance for the day is about 100 km, 75% of it very demanding for anyone on a loaded bike.
> From Eganville, it’s about 150 kms south to Ottawa through rolling farmland. When I made this ride in 2012, I took a day and a half, camping overnight beside a lake about 65 kms west of Ottawa. This week, I rode the distance in a long day, arriving at sunset after some ten hours on the road.
> Total distance, then, about 450 kms over four days.
Here’s a collection of photos:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2ml4qdlvm6vm583/4a_CXcWPG9You’ll see from these that the landscape, especially in the highland areas, shows a family resemblance to the Catskills where Jim rides—photo #17 gives some sense of that. (I understand that both the Catskills and the Adirondacks, a big eroded massif in upstate NY, are part of the Frontenac Spur, an extension of the Canadian Shield southwards cross the St Lawrence and into New York state.) The granite of the Madawaska Highlands is some of the oldest rock on Earth, but the hills in Eastern Ontario are much lower than those in New York. The hills here were squished and bevelled under more than a mile of ice during the last Ice Age. Between the rocks, the cedar swamp, the shallow and scattered topsoil and the blackfly, it’s pretty unrewarding for farmers.
Not that people didn’t try. During the first half of the 19th century, many Scots and Irish families settled in the Ottawa Valley, and in the area between Ottawa and Kingston at the eastern end of Lake Ontario. Some fled the Great Hunger, and the ships that brought them to Montreal returned to Ireland loaded with white pine from the Valley. After 1815, many veterans of Wellington’s armies, especially but not only Scottish highlanders, settled in the area. They were given 100 acres (too often little more than cedar swamp), an axe, a shovel, and a bag of flour, and were told, by the way, please be ready to form a militia to serve HMG if the ‘Murricans decide to invade again. In the 1820s, Scottish stone masons were engaged to help build the Rideau Canal traversing the 200 kms between between Ottawa and Kingston. They adapted their skills and knowledge to the local limestone, so one can find examples of one-and-a-half storey stone cottages throughout the area west and south of Ottawa. (Photo #6 is an example.) They’re beautiful to look at, but desperately cold in the winter unless well insulated with modern materials.
So the place names are rich with references to the Celtic fringe of Europe. In the latter part of the 19th century, they were joined by settlers from Poland and Germany. (First Nations didn’t have much of a say in all of this, as you may know. They remain here, however, especially Algonkian people on both sides of the Ottawa, and as elsewhere in Canada, refuse to fade quietly into the night.)
But it’s a region not heavily populated these days, and where a century and more ago the economy of the area rested on marginal farms, lumbering in the winter, and some mines, today the farms in the hills are largely gone. A reduced lumber trade remains, and tourism offers some income, as do niche products like alpaca wool. The Ottawa Valley closer to the river has fertile lowlands and its agricultural products can be of very high quality: the tiny village of Balderson, for example, produces the best cheddar cheese I’ve ever found. The five- and six-year-old varieties are to die for. The closest challenger I’ve ever found was (Andre will be pleased to hear) a five-year-old cheddar sold by a farmer from South Africa’s Eastern Cape, and bought in a Johannesburg market, of all places.
The first brush of autumn came on Monday night, when the temperature dropped to -1. Happily, I spent that night with my friends in their splendid log cabin. Now nearing 145 years old, it’s equipped with mod cons like broadband satellite internet, not to mention H & C running—things their forebears couldn’t have imagined. After a cool and cloudy first day, I had sunny cool weather for the remaining three days, and the nights were clear and very cool. We had a brilliant full moon on Tuesday, bright enough to read by. The area is being considered for a night-time observatory: it is the most southerly spot in Canada for an observatory, as the absence of towns means very little light pollution. Certainly I’d never seen such a moon in Ottawa, 200 kms away.
As often happens on a tour, I had a couple of delightful conversations with strangers in cafés. I had stopped for an early supper on Tuesday, after 100 kms across some very hard hills, and struck up a conversation with a genial guy in his late ‘50’s who was intrigued by the bike. I asked him for advice on the campgrounds nearby, and he said, “Don’t bother – come and pitch your tent in my backyard.” So I did, and we had an enjoyable conversation, solving most of the world’s problems, if anyone was paying attention. Turned out his family were second cousins of my friends in Denbigh.
The only wrinkles I encountered were mechanical. On the 2nd & 3rd days especially—i.e., in the hills—my rear derailleur started giving me problems, becoming very reluctant to shift into the 2nd-lowest cog on my cassette, especially when I was using my smallest chainring. This was never a disabling problem, but it was a serious distraction, especially on the hills—I never could be certain that I’d make the downshift cleanly. Eventually, I did a workaround by shifting down from the 3rd to the 1st cog, skipping the 2nd altogether. Will try to sort it out over the weekend, after giving it enough time to reflect on and repent for its sins.
This is not a new problem for me, and it’s why I now have a New Raven frame and forks in my basement, awaiting a shipment of front and rear hubs from Germany. In January, these will be mated with bars, wheels and tires, mudguards, brakes, BB and cranks, etc., and built into a complete New Raven. Then, I’ll retire my Eclipse from loaded touring and keep it for day rides.
The Madawaska tour is also a good test of gear ratios and my 66-year-old legs. My Eclipse has a 12-36 cogset, mated to 24-36-48 chainrings. This gives me a low of 18.3 gear-inches. I managed all right on the couple of dozen “Grade 1” hills in the ride (for me, “Grade 1” means the lowest cog on the small ‘ring.) But, there were several times when I would have welcomed a lower gear. Or two. A Raven with a 38 x 17 would give me two gears below 18.3.
So, I’m thinking that next spring, post-snow and pre-bugs—May, sometime?—I’ll take my New Raven to the Madawaska Hills. It’ll be a good test for German
mythology technology!
