Spain and Beyond

Biking Day 1:
25 miles, 794 ft ascent (egads!), 3 hrs. 56 min.
Daily Drena: The Easy Day

RING, RING, RING … the alarm goes off at 8:00am and I promptly hit it off. RING, RING, RING … it goes off again at 8:15am and I jump out of bed as breakfast is to be served at 8:30am and our shuttle to the northern tip of the island is to arrive at 9:30am. A quick shower later and a shout over to the dead asleep Lorena to wake up and we stumble our way over to the office area for a breakfast of yogurt with blueberries and strawberries, followed by some tea and bacon pancakes. We force ourselves to eat as our bodies are still on the 5:30am MST timeframe.

Finishing up breakfast, we have some extra time waiting for our shuttle, so Lorena wanders around and takes some photos of the property we couldn’t see in the dark while I finish packing up our panniers for the day.

Our driver, George, arrives on time and we set up our new bikes for the week to our liking and put on the clipless pedals we brought from home. Everything seems like it’ll work, although the upright riding style of a hybrid bike is NOT going to be efficient … maybe we should have upgraded to the road bike option?

After a two hour drive up the northern tip of our island and many entertaining stories about other passengers George has driven around the island (rich Aspenites with no concept of money, a 5th generation Los Angeles man with a lost relative, seekers of lost history, …) and some local history (irish moss, potato barons, confederation forming …), we arrive at North Cape, the northernmost point of the island and the beginning of our journey.

Lorena popped her head into the gift shop while I finished up the final setting up of the bikes and came back with an ominous sign – they were heavily stocked with rain jackets and heavy duty sweatshirts! Hoping for the best, we took some photos and off we went.

The first ten miles of our journey was just to get to the start of the Confederation Trail, so we took George’s advice and took scenic route 12 down the coast. It was good advice as, although there was no shoulder, the traffic was few and far between and it provided great views of the coastline.

After 10 miles of road riding and a few more bike adjustments, we arrived in Tignish, the start of the Confederation Trail. We wandered through the tiny town, found a little hole in the wall to eat, then with storm clouds looming and thunder in the distance, took off along the Confederation Trail in an attempt to outrace the rain.

While we succeeded in our endeavor to outrace the rain (minus a few sun showers which just cooled us off), we were sorely disappointed in this vaunted Confederation trail everyone spoke about and understood George’s advice now. He had advised us to continue down scenic route 12 until we reached the next town of Alberton. However, due to curiosity about the trail and the looming storm clouds, we decided to take the trail instead. But after a few miles we were bored out of our minds as the gravel trail rolled on and on in a straight line, with trees to either side and nothing of note to pique our interest. But, we were stuck now as the scenic route and the trail didn’t have any real connectors between the two without adding substantial miles to the trip, so we rolled on …

… and 15 miles later we rolled into Alberton. Now, that’s not to say there wasn’t anything of note. Lorena decided with the sun coming back out from the clouds that we should make a quick stop and put on some sunscreen. Well, the stop was definitely quick as after maybe 30 seconds I took off with a mad swarm of mosquitos after me. Lorena shortly followed and with a dozen fresh bites between us and bloody trails down our arms from smashing skeeters, we decided we were going to do more road riding and less trail riding in the upcoming days.

A few more kilometers down the road and we were made it to the Northport Pier Inn, where we were staying for the evening. The concierge was entirely surprised to see us dry as a bone though, as another group of riders had apparently gotten drenched along the same route so we lucked out on our timing today!

We grabbed some showers, walked around town a little (which took about 5 minutes…), and then headed off to eat dinner next door and plan for the next day. Our average speed ended up being 6.4mph, so we need to either lighten our loads or not stop as much, as we have 60 miles to go tomorrow…