Toronto to St Catharine’s

Distance covered: 75 miles

Punctures: I think one, plus a broken chain

Pubs visited: One

Ride highlight: Cycling through a vineyard and finding some wild grapes

Ride low point: The city of St Catharines and the locals we encountered

Date: June 2012

View Toronto to St Catharine’s in a larger map

This was not our most successful of rides. We were planning on taking the train out to the vineyards surrounding Toronto and then enjoy a cycle tour of the wineries getting slowly inebriated before taking the train back to Toronto. However, we spent so much time enjoying a slap up breakfast that we missed the only train going that way in the morning. After a brief discussion we decided to forget the train altogether and cycle out to the vineyards instead, this was not the best of plans….

The ride took longer than we anticipated and although it had a few scenic and interesting sections, it was largely an uninspiring ride. The ride was also punctuated with bike problems and we never got a glass of wine in a single vineyard! We ended the day in the ugly and completely charmless city of St Catharines (apologies to anyone who resides there). Wearing head-to-toe lycra we managed to stick out like sore thumbs attracting a fair amount of unwanted attention from the not-so-friendly locals. We ducked into a terrible looking pub to avoid the growing stares and also to boost our flagging spirits with some food and alcohol! The food turned out to be not so bad and the bar tend was chatty and kind, so we left the pub in much better moods than when we had arrived.