Prince Edward Island, September 2009

Sept 18

Today was the last day of the bike ride. On the map below, the red track is what we did today, travelling just over 60 kms from St. Peters to the bike shop (MacQueen's) in Charlottetown.

We had pretty good weather for the ride. It started out a bit cool, so I dressed somewhat warmly. Stephen wore shorts, but he had on a few layers for his upper body - by the end of the ride, he was down to tshirt and shorts. I, on the other hand, kept my wind-and-rain-breaker on the whole time. Any time I felt that it was warm enough to start shedding, the wind would come up. And the closer we got to Charlottetown, the windier it was. There were times when even pedalling downhill was a struggle, it was so windy.

We didn't stop much on the trip. We arrived at the suggested lunch place before 11:00, and we had had a big breakfast, so we weren't hungry. At about 30 kms, we stopped for a muffin break. At about 50 kms, we had a chocolate bar break - I advised Stephen that without something to provide some energy, I wasn't going to make it!

It took almost exactly 6 hours to do the ride.

Most of the ride was again on the Rail Trail, without a whole lot of scenery. Except for this one place, near the upper end of the Hillsborough River, the big inlet on which Charlottetown lies.

The bike tour folks had already delivered our luggage to the hotel we're staying at tonight. And they gave us a ride to the hotel when we arrived! And the owner of the bike shop called me a "hero"! And I truly felt like one! This was our longest ride of the week, and, to my knowledge, the longest I've ever ridden in one day.

In the end, we biked a total of 338 kms in 8 days, hiked just under 7 kms, and casually strolled down several streets where we didn't monitor the length of the walk. That's over 42 kms of biking per day on average! No wonder I feel bushed....

I have advised Stephen that I am not interested in similar biking vacations! I'm really glad we did it, and PEI is a super place for such a vacation. But I'm at the stage of "been there, done that, don't need to do it again". And I got the T-shirt!

The Bed&Breakfasts that we have stayed at have been really good. Three of them featured hosts that were really into preparing sumptuous spreads for breakfast. The other just provided a well-stocked kitchen - including fresh-baked muffins and banana bread.

This is the last page of my travelogue. I hope you have enjoyed it. And perhaps it has inspired you to try something similar.