Butter tarts and bikes and annoying virtual people

I have an imaginary friend. She lives inside my Garmin 820. My Garmin is a navigational device that sits on my handlebars. I upload pre-plotted courses to it, and it guides me through the day, giving turn-by-turn directions. It is when I press start on a course for the day that “she” (also known as “the bitch”) makes herself known.

When I start pedalling, getting my 30kg barge of a bike rolling, she, who calls herself my “vitual training partner” shoots off, and rides at a steady speed of 24km/h. Anybody who has taken even the quickest peek at my end of day stats will know that I get nowhere near that as an average speed. But she is steady, and just rides all day, virtually following the roads and paths I’ve plotted. She doesn’t stop to have a drink, to eat, to lie down on the grass and stretch, to admire the view or even to have a wee. She also rides up hills at the same steady speed. She is not human. Of course, because she is imaginary. Or as she likes to think, virtual.

So you can imagine, she virtually gets to the end well before I do. And when she does, she buzzes the Garmin with a sound that is a bit like a “nya nya nya-nya-nya”. That’s when I call her “bitch”. She’s supposed to be training partner, to spur me on to greater training heights. I don’t need her. I wish she would go away.

But today she only beats me by about 9km. I’m gaining on her!

Our ride today is less pretty and enjoyable than yesterday. Though we are still ostensibly following the historic Rideau route, we don’t see a lot of water today.

After a long conversation with Mike, our B&B host, who is extremely passionate about Merrickville and the greater Rideau area, we set off around noon, stuffed wth butter tarts from Nana B’s Bakery (one of Mike’s very good recommendations).

A butter tart is a pastry filled with a very sweet concoction of butter, sugar, egg, and maybe some fruit or nuts. You probably need to be riding to get away with eating these sweet treats

It’s not a huge ride today, the weather is pleasant, and as far as we can tell Newboro, our destination is a bit of a zero-interest place. It’s just a point on the map the appropriate distance between Merrickville and Kingston. So there’s no real hurry to be anywhere.

We ride first to Smiths Falls (the town), tweaking our route a little after hitting a dirt section. I don’t know why the bike route plotting tools insist on diverting us from main roads if it means bumping over dirt. Nobody on a road bike would want to do that, and I can tell you that you don’t want to do that on a heavily loaded tourer either.

It turns out that there are no falls at Smiths Falls. There used to be, but a dam built here in 1828 put paid to the falls, though the name lingers. We eat at a bakery in Smiths Falls, watching the local constabulary deal with an issue next door. The choice isn’t great at the bakery. When I see a sandwich sign – my brain goes to multigrain bread with tomato, crunchy cucumber, capsicum – but I’m not in Melbourne for sure, so it is grilled cheese for me.

Immediately after Smiths Falls, the road surface deteriorates. This time, though, the cracks have been repaired, but the shiny tar filling the cracks plays havoc with my bike tires, and I can feel them slipping underneath me. Luckily that stretch doesn’t last too long.

We weave on and off route 15 most of the day. There’s a light head wind, but not enough to cause any issues. The only real issue we have is when, riding along a minor road, we encounter a “No Exit” sign in front of us. That’s Canadian for “Dead End”. That’s not good news for us. We check our route, and the maps shows this road reaching Route 15 and us making a left turn.

Nope.

We reach the end of the road, and there is no graceful turn onto Route 15. It sure is a dead end! However, we scramble up a small hill with our bikes, unload them, lift them over the barrier, reload them, cross the road and keep going. Simple.

We arrive at our our home for the evening, Newboro House B&B in around 5pm. Our host, Nicky is waiting. She shows us our rooms and where to store our bikes and then rushes off to work.

One thing that is important to a cycle tourist is the end of day shower (immediately before the end of day beer). Though we don’t have a private bathroom here, the shared bathroom is amazing, with a huge shower, plenty of space, plenty of towels. And plenty of hot water; you just need a bit of patience while it gets going.

We clean up, and head out on foot to find beer of the day. There are two candidates. We choose Stirling Lodge. Stirling is a business, specialising in accommodation and packages for people wanting to fish in the area. It has a bar and serves meals. We wander into the bar and share a couple of beers with Dudley, who turns out to be the owner.

We move over to the Stagecoach Inn for dinner, where we are greeted by Nicky, our B&B host, who also works at the restaurant. Dinner is good – and they put on a “chicken” ragu pasta for me.

Newboro is a small and quiet town. It serves perfectly as a stopover on our way through, ticking all the boxes of bed, beer, dinner and sleep.

Stats for today:

• Distance: 76.9km
• Climb: 286m
• Average speed: 18.7km/h
• Average temperature: 34C
• Moving time: 4:07:10
• 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 at Stirling Lodge, in the bar with Dudley, the owner.

Along the way today: