Farewell and Au Revior St Lawrence River … we’ve had a fine time … hello Lake Ontario

Kingston was the original capital of the united Canadas. It served that role for just three years, from 1841 to 1844. During that time, the city of Kingston built an elaborate town hall building, that seemed to destined as the Parliament building. However, the role of capital was moved away as Kingston’s location near the border made it vulnerable to American attack. The capital moved to Montreal, then alternated between Quebec City and Toronto until Ottawa was permanently selected as capital by Queen Victoria.

So Kingston was left with a grand building, which, over the years has had many tenants, including market vendors, a saloon, and Canada Post, as well as city administration, and a long line of mayors with ever increasingly elaborate chains of office (and facial hair).

Feeling like we’ve skimmed over Kingston, we front up at 10am for a quick Town Hall tour before hitting the road. Out guide takes us around the building, which by its design really does appear to have been intended for Canada’s pariliament, though our guide denied it. It has two wings, with chambers that seem set up for an upper and lower house (right down to the wall colours of green and red). One of the chambers remains intact as a meeting hall, but the other has been partitioned into offices and local council operates from here.

It’s a grand old building that just didn’t get a chance to reach its potential.

Today is a hot and sticky day, even at 10:30. We race back to our AirBNB to get out by 11, and arrive back slick with sweat. There’s no time for showers, and squeezing sweaty bodies into stretchy bike gear is no fun. Not at all. Not even a little bit.

We push off, thankful that the breeze generated by movement cools us down. That’s evaporative cooling at its simplest and finest.

On the way out of Kingston we stop at one of the Martello Towers. There are six of these around Kingston. They are squat, flat roofed, round towers, built during times of border tension between British North America (Canada) and the United States. They are kind of picturesque and a drawcard around Kingston.

It’s too hot and humid to stop long, and we hit the road. Today we are following the Great Lakes Trail. During planning, it seemed that we would have bike trails all the way down the side of the waterway. The reality is a little less pleasant. The bike trail is actually on the busy route 33 out of Kingston, made more busy by road works. We battle our way through with a lot of vehicles, until one point where we pass through a road block with a strea of cars and then … freedom.

The road is pretty good now, with a wide paved shoulder, we are back to water views, and the traffic is sporadic in our direction. We can finally relax and enjoy the ride. Once out of Kinston and the traffic snarls, we have have a 49km ride to a ferry crossing, and we make pretty smart time, stopping only in pretty Bath village for a break.

We are riding along not only the Great Lakes Trail (because we are heading into the area where Lake Ontario flows into the St Lawrence River – it is bye bye St Lawrence, hello Lake Ontario) but this is also the Loyalist Parkway. After the American Revolution, people who had fought with the British and/or remained loyal to the Crown fled to British North America, and settled along this route. There’s plenty of British flags flying along here still.

We have a quick (and free) ferry ride across to Glenora, ride on to Picton, and stop for … you guessed it … ice cream. It’s only a short 5km ride from there to our home for the next two nights, Grove Cottage, a B&B just outside Bloomfield. This place has friendly hosts, bike storage and cats! Three of them.

Every three to four days we stop for multiple nights, to take a break, rest the legs, do the laundry and make like a tourist. This area, Prince Edward County (but known to everyone as just “the County”) is a new wine area and food area, so you can imagine what we will be doing tomorrow!

But before then, there’s calories to consume. We have to walk about 20 minutes to the nearest restaurant The Waring House. They have the most amazing apple and cheese soup, made from local cider. It’s a highlight, and named by Neil in his top three all time soups. I asked what the othe two were and he said “soups that you make.”

After dinner we walk back along a dark and very busy road. It is not a great experience, and obviously not the done thing, as at one point a car pulls up and a woman asks “are you guys OK?” We assure her we are, so she does a U-turn and continues on. This is somebody who saw us walking along, stopped, turned around and came to check on us. Canadians at their best.

Stats for today:

• Distance: 70.4
• Climb: 298m
• Average speed: 19.8
• Average temperature: 29C
• Moving time: 3:3:15
• See our ride on Strava

The beer picture

At the end of a day’s ride, our tradition is to enjoy a beer, and to photograph it for posterity. Today’s beer picture was taken 973m before the end of the day. We are staying at a B&B a little out of town, so, not sure of the beer situtation, we stop and pre-purchase at a local brewery.

Along the way today: