West Lorne to Port Dover August 05, 2022

West Lorne to Port Dover

August 05, 2022

The forecast for inclement weather continues with 40-90% chance of thunderstorms. The winds however weren’t real bad with most of the forecasts having the winds coming out of the south or south-west.  South west would give us some help and south a cross wind.  The sky looked really foreboding with a lot of big black clouds set against a dark gray back ground.  So when we were handed the route sheets the previous evening showing 94 miles compared to the scheduled 80 miles nobody was happy.  I set to work looking at the route and realized that in previous years we had gone straight to Port Dover rather than following the coast.  I also knew that once a person got onto all of those little back lanes the surface would so rough as to be almost un-rideable.   I quickly prepared a Garmin GPX file. I didn’t have to ask if anyone wanted to follow me as I quickly had six riders and that was a good number. 

The first stop of the day was breakfast which was 2.9 miles down the road.  After filling the tank with lots of scrambled eggs and bacon we were off.  The first 6 miles of my route tracked the official route and was down some brand new pavement.  The six of us were all in a pace line so we made great time.  After the official route turned off we continued down the new pavement for another 20 miles.  When we got to the end of the new pavement we hit pavement which was only a year or so old but was still in perfect condition.  When we got to the 35 mile mark we picked up the official route which we followed for another 5 miles, there we met up with one of the riders following the official route and he was at mile 44, compared to our 40.  He reported a lot of really bad roads.  So we knew we were on the right track.

We pulled into a farmers market and filled our water bottles but there wasn’t any lunch so we continued on down the road.  At mile 55 we came to another farmers market which had a food truck.  It was hot dogs and chicken strips but hot food.  While we ate a few little sprinkles came down but not big cloud bursts.  After we got back on the route the rain started so we stopped and put our coats on and then the rain immediately stopped.

We pulled into our campsite in the Norfolk Conservation Area, minutes after the lead riders who had done the official route. We made the route in just over 80 miles and with only 1600 feet of climb compared to the official route of 94 and 2500 feet of climb.  Meanwhile a bunch of the group had run into some major cloud bursts and were forced into the vans. 

The supper was going to be at one of the churches in Port Dover so we were loaded into vans and shuttled into town.  As it was going to be lasagna and one of the worst meals on the tour I went for a burger with Tom R  and Mark.  After supper we headed back to the church for rider meeting and awards night.  I wound up getting an award for helping fix a tire two days previously.  I was quite pleased.

All in a pretty good day.  I think we had a total of ten expansion cracks all day and perfect pavement.  

Terry