With all the preliminaries out of the way the only thing left to do is actually start riding my bike!
Sadly this only lasted the 10 minutes or so it took me to get to York Mills Station, then I had to find the GO bus bay and wait for my bus. I showed up early because the buses have a limit of 2 bikes and I didn’t want to be in a situation where I had to wait for the next bus. The bus came, there were no other bikes, so I was able to get on and head to Brampton. Once I got off at Bramalea GO station it took me a while to figure out where I was supposed to go. My watch could only tell me where it wanted me to be with a light blue starting flag on a black screen but it doesn’t show a map of the area so it was tough to see how to get there. Eventually I opened up my route on my phone and things started to make a bit more sense. I’d need to go under the train tracks to the far platform and make my way to a parking lot from there. After that it was relatively straightforward, I took some industrial streets until they finally ended at the Etobicoke Creek Trail. The trail was nice as it was fairly green and kept me off busy streets for the most part, although there were a couple of sections where I had to go through residential streets due to golf courses or construction. On one such detour I was waiting at a light when someone else on a bike joined me. He saw my getup and asked where I was heading. He then explained how to get back to the trail (he wasn’t using it as he would be taking a more direct route to his destination). The trail is quite long but it was always tying into different parks. It reminded me a bit of the Humber River trail. I followed it to its end at Kennedy Road near some subdivisions at what looked like the end of Brampton, and sure enough once I was clear of this last group of houses I was between farmers’ fields. Things started flat but I knew that there would be some big hills as I got closer to Caledon.
Near Inglewood the road crossed the Caledon Rail Trail. I hadn’t biked on this section of the trail before but I did walk on it from the nearby Ken Whillans Conservation Area. At that time we had stopped for ice cream but it was too early for me to get an ice cream now. There was also a bicycle shop that had a cafe. It was tempting to stop and check it out, but again it felt a bit too early in the day for that. BUT, it’s probably worth checking out on a family outing along the rail trail.
Eventually I made it to Orangeville. The plan was to have lunch and then hang out for an hour or so to give myself time to fully digest it. I’ve noticed from other rides that I feel noticeably worse riding after a meal. I can’t skip the food on a long trip so need some other way to deal with it, and giving myself a long break so that hopefully my blood would leave my stomach and come back to my legs seemed like the best plan. I ended up getting fish and chips from a place outside of downtown. They were a bit put off by my request to bring my bike inside but they were fairly empty so it wasn’t in anyone’s way. After lunch I went back to downtown Orangeville. They had a farmer’s market as well as some event where live musicians were playing on different street corners. I spent most of my time playing Pokemon Go and trying to do a raid, but no one else joined in. I decided I wanted to get some ice cream as well. Years back I had stopped at Orangeville on the way back from a camping trip and we were able to get ice cream from some place that gave huge scoops for very low prices. Sadly they weren’t open anymore so I had to find somewhere else. There were signs pointing the way to a Mill Creek Gardens ice cream shop so I followed them until I got to the store. I asked if they made milkshakes and when they said yes I ordered a vanilla. They didn’t have prices listed but how much could a milkshake be? $10 apparently. The milkshake was pretty average too so I couldn’t tell myself that at least it was a really good one and was worth it that way. Anyways, with my milkshake I went back to the main street to finish my resting period.
Rest done it was time to continue, from Orangeville I’d be taking the rail trail for the rest of the day, so I wouldn’t need to worry about hills anymore. There was some construction going on in town so I had to ride on gravel roads for a couple of km until I could join up with the trail.
Out past Shelburne it started to rain, which wasn’t on the forecast. I rode for a bit hoping it would pass but as it got stronger I realized I had to put my jacket on. Thankfully the rain didn’t last for too long but I was already wet and it wasn’t particularly hot or sunny anymore either. As I made it to Dundalk I decided that now would be a good time for a hot drink. There was a cafe right by the trail, they wouldn’t let me bring my bike inside so I locked it up by a window and then took a seat by the same window so that I’d be able to keep an eye on it. I stayed just long enough to have my coffee and dry up a bit and then continued on my way to Flesherton.
When I got there I was still a bit early to set up camp so I thought I’d scout out the area first and then come back to get supper. But as I was going to the site I discovered I’d have to take a pretty steep downhill, which would mean coming back up that same uphill which I really didn’t want to do. So I rode back into town to get my supper. I saw some signs for something called the “Flesherton Fling” that was happening that day but I didn’t see anything happening anywhere. Maybe I missed it?
At the pizza place they had slices but all of them had some kind of pork on them so I ordered a whole pizza instead. I was feeling pretty hungry so I figured I’d be able to eat a small pizza without issue. The pizza would take a while so I asked if I could plug in to an outlet to charge my devices and then went to the washroom. When I came back someone else came to make and order and while they were waiting for their pizza to come we got to talking. I guess when you pull up to a place and see a loaded up bicycle and then when you get in and see someone in biking gear it’s pretty obvious they’re on a trip and it’s a pretty easy conversation starter. I told him about the ride so far as well as where I was planning on going. I think his name was Jason and he had just run a marathon on the Bruce Trail and was going to run a half-marathon the next day as well! I fell like of the two of us he was going to have the tougher weekend. He works at nuclear power plants, sometimes at Bruce Power in Kincardine and sometimes at the Pickering power plant. When he’s at Pickering he would often go to the Durham forest to run after work. He really loves running! Once his pizza was ready he left to go back to his hotel to get ready for the run the next morning. I kept on eating my pizza but after a while I had to accept that even though I was hungry I wouldn’t be able to finish it so I asked for some paper plates so that I could pack the remaining slices better. Maybe it would be my breakfast tomorrow. Now I had to make my way to where I’d be camping and it really was a big downhill. It was fun to ride down at the end of a long day but one saying I like to say when I’m riding with Haroon is “what goes down must go up” it’s an inversion of the more popular saying but for biking it fits my pessimism about hills pretty well. I’d be saying this to myself a lot over the course of this trip.
At Hoggs Falls I tried to look for a good place to camp. I wanted to be hidden from view because even though the GMBR map said this was Crown land I couldn’t find anything about it on the policy atlas and didn’t want to be woken up in the middle of the night by some ranger or property owner telling me to be on my way. I was able to set up camp down a small hill off the side of the road and hoped I wouldn’t be visible to any passers by.
I was a bit worried about keeping my pizza with me in the tent but it was in my waterproof pannier so hopefully not so much smell would get out. Also, it being summer there were lots of other food sources around so hopefully no creature would be foolish enough to interact with a person when they could just get something else instead. I guess we’d find out soon enough.
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