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| Sunset with Isle Haute, taken by Sue |
I wanted to get in one more ride before we
left the Bay of Fundy area, and since I felt a bit let down by my failed
attempt to get over the big ridge (which I learned is called North Mountain)
from the Annapolis Valley side, I challenged myself to try again. This time I
chose to take Long Point Road, which had a more consistent grade than Route
360, as Sue and I had noticed when returning from our ice cream reward a couple
of days earlier.
I also wanted to explore a bit more of the
area to the south of Harbourville, so I started off that direction, heading out
some unpaved roads toward Victoria Harbour. The route had plenty of rolling
hills to take the steam out of a rider’s legs, and I was sure to pace myself
with the long climb up the bayside of the ridge still on the menu, let alone
the “big hill”.
The road out of Victoria Harbour was nicely
paved, considering how many of the area surfaces are weather-beaten, and a
consistent wind was at my back to help lessen the effort a bit. Over the top of
the ridge the road followed a much straighter path than any of the other
parallel routes leading down into the valley, and I was able to coast down at a
pretty high speed without having to brake too much. I am a bit more cautious
than I would have been, say, twenty years ago, but with smooth paving and good
sightlines, it is still great fun to just tuck and go!
Not many streets in, out or through the
Annapolis Valley are very flat. After I made the left-hand turn on Route 221, I
faced a constant series of small hills up and down, crossing small bridges over streams that irrigate the fertile valley which supports a diverse agricultural industry
including fruit trees, berries, livestock and wineries.
Long Point Road greeted me with a steep
start, but nothing like that of Route 360, as I was able to keep my breathing
under control and also my legs from completely blowing up. I don’t usually like
to climb out of the saddle, since I tend to accelerate and lose a consistent
cadence, but a couple of times I stood up just to change position and
concentrated on keeping smooth.
There certainly isn’t anything like North
Mountain to practice on around Royersford, so while putting out this type of 10-15-minute
effort, I was thinking of it more as a time trial, just holding the tempo as
long as possible. I knew the rest of the ride was pretty much downhill, so I
really didn’t have to save anything for the run back to the house.
I was really surprised at how good I felt
near the top and decided to cut across the ridge on Brow of the Mountain Road,
just to add some miles to the ride and work some of the fatigue out of my legs.
I took a photo of the wonderful view down to the Annapolis Valley.
My intent was to again spare myself the
nasty climb out of Harbourville’s marina, so I cut across Barley Street back to
Long Point Road and enjoyed racing down that long gradual slope back to the
house.
It was sad to leave the Bay of Fundy area the next morning after such a peaceful stay, and although I like to have access to information and
contact with the outside world through the internet, I can’t say I missed it
totally. Taking a “tech break” was kinda nice, and think I appreciated the ‘net
hiatus even more when I had to catch up on emails later!
Our final stop on this travel day was to be Prince
Edward Island, but we had a few interesting places to visit along the way,
including Burncoat Head Park, which has the world’s most extreme range of tides
at 53.6 feet! We arrived at low tide so that we could walk out on the Minas
Basin floor – it was amazing to think that in a few hours, if we were still
standing in the same spot, we would essentially be under over forty feet of
water.
The next destination was South Maitland,
where a tidal bore, which is a large wave caused by a flood tide funneling into
a long, narrow and shallow inlet, forms on the Shubenacadie River.
Unfortunately, other than spotting a few bald eagles, the experience really
ended up more of a BORE, as the river was running rather dry, and a strong
outflow would have made the scene much more dramatic with a larger wave. It still was
pretty interesting to see the slow, northerly-flowing river that was meandering
through sandbars toward the basin, turn in a matter of minutes into a
churning, southerly flowing river.
We felt bad for the folks who had paid for
the “whitewater” (brown, really) rafting experience, as the guides had to make
their own fun zigzagging in and out of the rapids of rather measly size. The
passengers didn’t seem overly disappointed as they whooped it up when flying
past us.
Early in the evening we reached the
Confederation Bridge, which is an eight-mile structure linking the province of
Prince Edward Island with mainland New Brunswick, Canada. At the visitor center
we watched a fascinating feature on the construction of the multi-span
balanced cantilever bridge, as the often-frozen water of Northumbrian Strait
had to be considered during its design. I’ll leave you to investigate, if you
are interested.
We were staying in a modern, pre-fab wooden
cabin in Corran Ban, not far from Tracadie Bay on the island’s north side. The
first settlers in Corran Ban were from Moidart, Scotland. When the fresh
water of Winter Bay meets the salt water of Tracadie, it forms white foam,
shaped like a sickle. Corran Ban is Gaelic for “white sickle”.
Prince Edward Island has a reputation as a
cycling paradise, mainly on the strength of the 292-mile Confederation Trail
system, which has two main branches stretching almost the whole west to east
length and north to south width of the island. The province has worked to build
spurs to connect most of PEI’s larger communities to the main branches and has
additional routes planned or under construction.
The trail system is built mostly upon the
roadbed of the former Prince Edward Island Railway, which was operated later by
the Canadian National Railway. The railroad saw boom times during WWII, but
with the competition of trucks, saw a sharp decline. Canadian National had
removed most trackage during the early 1990s, and completion of the
Confederation Bridge in 1997 eliminated any need to float freight cars over to
the island on barges. The abandoned railroad lines were sold to the provincial government
for development.
The trail and bridge are named in honor of
the 1864 conference in Charlottetown, PEI, to discuss the British Confederation
of Canada (at the time, consisting of Quebec and Ontario) with Nova Scotia and
New Brunswick. Ironically, Prince Edward Island’s main reason for joining the
Confederation three years later was bankruptcy, mostly brought upon by the
costs of building the railroad!
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