Probably the hardest climb of the trip!
September 1
Wow it’s September , how did that happen ??? It’s like my summer vacation is just about over and I’ll be back to school next week , back to the real world , back to the 9 to 5 . Then again maybe this was the real world , the simplicity of the Tom Sawyer life , instead of a raft I had a bicycle , instead of a river I had a road, even a book has an ending ; so we shall see, who knows whats around the next bend.
Today was a hard day !!! , but it was one of the most rewarding days on the trip . The Cabot Trail is tough !!!, the climbs are long and at times steep , and there are many , we climbed over 6,400 feet today !!! the most cumulative climbing in the whole trip. But the flip side was the spectacular scenery , breath taking at times !!!! enormous mountains covered in green on one side , wide open blue ocean on the other , it seemed that every turn held a new amazing view.
The other thing that made today tough was the weather , it was beautiful and sunny and for normal vacationing it was just perfect but for climbing mountains it was sweltering , sweat dripping off you in buckets especially for the North Mountain climb as it was inland between the mountains with hardly a breeze to be felt .
The first part of the trip was through the Margaree valley a spectacular river nestled between the green hills , with scattered farms and houses to be seen here and there, a fly fisherman casting in the river , a bald eagle perched high in a old tree stump surveying his surroundings , peaceful and serene !!!
We stopped in Cheticamp ( km 69 ) for lunch at a very nice Acadian restaurant , many of our bike parked outside !, we actually wanted breakfast but just missed the cut off time , so lunch it was , vegetable soap followed by fish cakes with vegetables and raisin pudding cake for desert .
With full bellies we headed out right into the first climb “ French Mountain ( 455 meters ), hard but with spectacular ocean views , the pictures I took do not do it justice by a long shot . From there it was an easy climb up to MacKenzie Mountain ( 372 meters) as we did not go back down to sea level to start that climb . Then the decent to Pleasant Bay was spectacular , fast lots of switchbacks ( tricky ones ) I probably went down a bit faster then I should reaching speeds of 69 km/h at times , Ed got up into the 70s !!!!, and the views coming down were just amazing !! . In Pleasant Bay we stopped and had Gatorade and ice cream.
From there we started going up North Mountain (445 meters) and steeper and hotter then hell . Some nearly suffered heat exhaustion and had to walk part of the way. The decent from that on was almost scary and I used lots of breaks on the way down.
A great day !!! hard but what a feeling to know you climbed those mountains and I'll never forget the scenery , just spectacular !!!!!
Total ridden today: 146.9 - Average speed : 20.3 - Ridding time: 7.13
Margaree Valley
Acadian restaurant were we had lunch
Fish cakes , very good !!
Going up !!
And up
down !!!
Maria Andrea on her way down
Cabot Trail goes on and on
Camp with the ocean in the distance
No comments:
Post a Comment