Madawaska Highlands - Day 3

Monday, August 1, 2011 - Ompah to Carp - 93 km

Slept again like a rock, awaking a few times to small animals moving around in the woods. Got up together, packed up the sleeping quarters and then made breakfast... coffee and oatmeal today. Mosquitos were still slightly annoying, but not enough to take out bigger ammunition than the occasional swat and German curses. We struck out into another blue sky day, although it started out hot. Lavant Station road is my dream riding conditions. Lots of twists and turns with short little up and down hills. The 5 km or so of gravel was well packed so went by nicely too. Katharina however, does not like this type of road so we plodded along. Occasionally I would speed ahead for a couple of kilometers, losing myself to the curves and the wind in my ears, only to stop in a shady spot where I waited for her to catch up. We rolled into Poland and took the obligatory photo of the town sign to prove that we actually biked to Poland. About 30 seconds later we were on the far side of town. A woman in a car pulled up beside us and gave us greetings which was a nice touch on our way out. At Hopetown we stopped at the general store and bought some "Apple Dapple" muffins which were pretty apple-dapply delcious if I do say so myself. The next 25 kilometers to Almonte was along a road with a fair amount of traffic, however the worst of the hills were behind us, as was the wind so we made reasonable progress. We passed another cyclist taking a break in some shade and said hi. A little while later he caught up to us and told us that it was mostly downhill to Almonte from here. In Almonte, we stopped at the pub by the water and ate a whole bunch of food. I also had a beer as I was feeling mighty thirsty from this hot ride in the sun. Filled the water bottle up here and then headed out north towards Blakeny. The traffic now was nil so the riding was quite pleasant. The rest of the way back to Carp went reasonably quick as the wind picked up and pushed us along. Stopped for veggies at a farmers cart prior to finishing the ride over the Diefenbunker and a stop for ice cream.

Poland at last. Since we had already stopped by the embassy, the border crossing was trivial.

Plodding along.

Almonte.

The Diefenbunker.

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