Final day of Urthbuoy's "Show Us Your Usual Haunts" photo contest. Turns out we have more haunts than days in a week - and I even cheated by starting a day early! So you won't get to see the trail run to Glen Haffy via K2 or the Palgrave single track or the run around our block (9.5 km of country roads) unless you visit. And please do.
Today was a summer weekend staple - a destination ride to The Shed Coffee Bar in Belfountain, a fantastic place owned by adventure racer Dave Corner.
'Bent and I rode to Caledon East (see Wednesday) then continued by rail trail to Inglewood. This ride took us from east Caledon into west Caledon, from the Humber River watershed into the Credit River watershed, from the Oak Ridges Moraine to the Niagara Escarpment. There is some friendly(?) rivalry between Caledon's two solitudes - the escarpment people and the moraine people. We are moraine people. Stoopid rocks and moss.
In spite of our differences, we have a few friends in west Caledon including Knobless and Gorgeous and their four pooches.
From Inglewood, there are several ways to get to The Shed but you can't avoid the big escarpment climb. Knobless joined us but his time was tight due to a lunch date, so we took roads part of the way including the infamous Grange Hill. (BTW, Knobless got his nickname because he uses a hybrid bike for everything, even the gnarliest trails.)
Belfountain is arguably the most beautiful village in Caledon, although I would never admit that in front of someone from western Caledon. Here's the little section of Bruce Trail that leads to Devil's Pulpit overlooking the area around the village. This was a 2-minute side hike from our bike ride.
Wise people generally don't post escarpment pics on Attackpoint because Hammer is so much better at it than everyone else. But I had to because that was the route to this view.
Here's the trail heading down off the escarpment by a big cliff. It gets a lot steeper, which is particularly fun in winter at night.
But we didn't go down. Today's goal was The Shed for iced latte and fresh chocolate zucchini bread.
Turns out a lot of people had the same idea to visit Belfountain, including an even larger number of motorcyclists than usual. It was a little strange to have an OPP officer watching over the village centre. Great news - there is a new ice cream place next to The Shed that has an espresso sundae with chocolate sauce. !!!
Knobless dashed off for his lunch date while 'Bent and I took the beautiful trail route back to Inglewood.
This trail network is great adventure race training. Look familiar?
As per tradition, we visited the Caledon Hills Cycling Shop in Inglewood on our way back. Had a nice chat with Don and somehow managed to find yet more gear we "need" that would fit into our bike packs. Best of all, we found Slowrunner out on her singlespeed and convinced her to ride back as far as Caledon East with us.
We stopped at the trail pavilion in Caledon East - the place where the first section of Trans Canada Trail in the country was officially designated about 15 years ago. 'Bent and I were there on that day (on a grade 8 school trip - ha!) and got our names in the first group on the first pavilion for buying a "meter of trail" each for $25.
Caledon's Walk of Fame is in the same place, with big carved rocks honouring people who live - or have lived - in Caledon, including Norman Jewison, Robertson Davies and Farley Mowat (who used to live across the road from our place and whose family still owns that house).
Thanks to Urthbuoy for challenging us to show off our back yards this week. It's been fun! It's also been interesting to see where other people play.