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OK, so it’s been a while, but hopefully you’ve all been enjoying having a relaxing and restful break over the Festive Season as much as I have. I’ll shortly be coming to the end of my little sojourn in southern California though, so I thought it might be a good time to have a look back at the journey so far, and also at what lies ahead.

And so, for all you number fans, here are a few statistics for the journey since its inception in June 2010:

Number of communities visited: 160

Number of nights when I was unable to find a host: 2

Distance cycled: 11,500 km

Number of vertical metres of ascent: 78,000 m

Number of vertical metres of descent: 77,500 m *

Calories burned: 370,000

Number of media articles about SOS Children’s Villages generated: 250

Amount of money raised: $22,500

There’s still many more miles to go though: I’ve only got about half way across Ontario so far, and there’s still the whole of Quebec and the Maritimes left to cover! When the journey finally comes to an end, I should have visited at least 300 communities in total, and raised – well, who knows?!

One thing I do finally now know, however, is where and when it will all end: on November 18th this year, I will cycle into Ottawa – for a very well-earned rest! I know that many of you who are reading this are many thousands of miles away, but if any of you are anywhere near Ottawa, or have friends or relatives there whom you haven’t visited in a while, or if you’ve just always fancied a little city break in Canada’s capital sometime, it really would be fantastically lovely to see some of you at the finish line!

And so, leaving that little thought with you, I shall get back to the endless administration necessary to ensure that the time between now and November is as profitable as possible for SOS!

(PS Apologies to all my subscribers who just got a post consisting of nothing but the SOS Children’s Villages website link: WordPress has just changed their system and things ain’t quite what (or where!) they used to be! Or, to put it another way: I clicked the wrong button. Sorry!)

* Yes, after all that work, I’m virtually back where I started…!

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Cambridge to Stratford:
Distance: 71 km
Ascent: 615 m
Cycling time: 4 hours, 53 minutes

Stratford to St Mary’s:
Distance: 27 km
Ascent: 122 m
Cycling time: 1 hour, 37 minutes

Even after being on this journey for over 18 months (it was exactly 18 months yesterday!), I’m still encountering a seemingly inexhaustible stream of ‘firsts’:

On the way to Cambridge, my gear cables froze for the first time… Perhaps I shouldn’t wash Ranger immediately before setting out into seriously sub-zero temperatures?!

On that same journey, I saw my first northern cardinal! (Note for British readers: northern cardinals are to the North American Christmas what robins are to the British Christmas, ie. actually resident all year round, but red and therefore shamelessly exploited by colour-theming Christmas card makers and festive decorators of all types. In spite of the illogicality of it all, though, you just can’t help feeling Christmassy when you see one on a snowy day… To complicate matters further, Canada does have a robin too (actually a kind of thrush). Those previously-noted imaginative-naming early European settlers noticed it had a red breast, so its name was a foregone conclusion, but it blew its chances of becoming Canada’s Christmas bird by very sensibly flying south for the winter…)

On my way to Stratford, I met my first Mountie! Only, he wasn’t a mountie… You see, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (The Mounties) only look after the smaller communities of Canada, so the uniformed gentleman on horseback that I encountered was actually a member of the Waterloo Regional Police – but he was Canadian, he was mounted, and he was a policeman, so I contend that he still counts! His lady Mountie (Mountette?) colleague had seen me on TV, so we had quite a long and lovely chat about SOS Children’s Villages, my journey – and how much easier it was to move her steed sideways… Funnily enough, sitting next to those two beautiful horses, Ranger felt a whole lot smaller than he ever does next to the trucks on the highway!

And along with all the ‘firsts’, a ‘last’: the ride to St Mary’s was my last ride of the year! Appropriately enough, it was completed in pouring rain and blowing winds, but I did manage to make it all the way to the end of the year’s itinerary under pedal-power, so I hang up my helmet triumphant, ready for a little Californian Christmas R&R before hitting the road again in the New Year!

The blog entries will continue over the winter though, so watch this space – there’s still so much more to tell you all about!

The lake in Queen's Park, Stratford - not quite completely frozen over yet...

Fields full of free-standing Christmas lights seem to be quite popular around here: this was the display in St Mary's

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Guelph to Kitchener:
Distance: 34 km
Ascent: 265 m
Cycling time: 2 hours, 21 minutes

Kitchener to Cambridge:
Distance: 10 km
Ascent: 61 m
Cycling time: 42 minutes

Originally, the big news for this entry was to be that my fundraising total had finally topped $20,000, but now, thanks to the most fantastically, amazingly generous donation from a couple in Cambridge, this news is out of date: my fundraising total now stands at just over $21,000! The couple concerned had already been thinking about cutting back on some of the greater excesses that have come to characterize Christmas in North America and instead channelling their festive goodwill in a more worthwhile direction – and then I came bounding into their lives, bubbling with enthusiasm for the difference SOS Children’s Villages is making in so many children’s lives, and evidently giving them ideas!

I mention this for three main reasons: firstly of course, I simply wanted to publicly recognize this couple’s immense kindness and generosity, and express how greatly their support is appreciated.

Secondly, for any doubters that there might be out there, I thought it would serve as a useful illustration that, even after eighteen months on this journey, I am still every bit as passionate about SOS as I was the day I started pedalling; even through the Hard Work of winter weather and preoccupied southern Ontarians, I’m still waving my arms around so much that people ask if I’m Italian, and although I’m already thoroughly sick of people asking “So, where did you start then?”, I have never tired of telling people how wonderful SOS is!

Finally, and perhaps most importantly though, I am, of course, hoping that it might put ideas into your minds too! If you think you could still have a happy Christmas without quite so much excess, why not consider re-directing at least a little of the money you save towards making some children somewhere in the world very happy indeed… As ever, the link is here if you want it…

Unlike London (on the Thames) and Stratford (on the Avon), Cambridge, Ontario is on the Grand River, not the Cam; there is, however, a very nice path along it that goes pretty much all the way from Kitchener to Cambridge

For some reason, I've been taking a lot of photos of trees just recently: perhaps because they look so beautifully sculptural at this time of year...

After speaking to a church in Paris, I took the rail trail back to Cambridge: partly so that I could enjoy the beautiful scenery and the beautiful sunshine, and partly so that I could tell all my European blog followers that I cycled from Paris to Cambridge in under two hours...

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If any of you are wondering why my last blog entry wasn’t posted until nearly midnight, it’s because I was once again battling with google maps, trying to get it to display my entire route on the same map at the same time. Having finally succeeded in doing that, however, I now discover that google will no longer allow me to embed the map in my web page, so if you go to the map page now, you’ll need to click on the link to actually see the map. Grrrrrrr!

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Hamilton to Oakville:
Distance: 39 km
Ascent: 245 m
Cycling time: 2 hours, 25 minutes

Oakville to Georgetown:
Distance: 42 km
Ascent: 333 m
Cycling time: 2 hours, 48 minutes

Georgetown to Guelph:
Distance: 44 km
Ascent: 395 m
Cycling time: 2 hours, 56 minutes

People often ask me if I’ve lost any weight as a result of all the cycling I’m doing these days: the answer to this is a resounding “no”. If anything, I’ve actually put on a pound or two (all muscle weight, of course – or so I choose to believe… ). One thing that all this exercise does seem to have done, though, is to boost my immune system to fairly impressive levels. Over the past few days, it has been quite clear that I’ve been fighting an infection of some sort, but more importantly, it has been equally clear that I’ve been winning. The tell-tale tingling in the nose and throat that would previously have inescapably heralded at least a week of snuffling, coughing and generally feeling lousy, actually produced nothing more than one day of feeling a bit feverish and particularly in need of some extra rest (which, fortunately, I was able to get, thanks to my understanding hosts in Oakville).

The next day, though, a rather alarming rash appeared across my neck and chest. As some of you know, my best friend died of meningitis just a couple of years ago, so you’ll forgive me for being slightly paranoid about such things ever since. However, it’s perhaps also a sign of how instantly I make myself at home amongst strangers these days that, after taking a post-ride bath, I handed a tumbler to the host I’d met only hours earlier and asked him to stare at my cleavage, in the hopes of finding that the rash disappeared under the pressure of the glass. Thankfully, it did. (And if any of you don’t know about the symptoms of meningitis and the tumbler test already, look here: it could save your life or that of someone you love…)

In other news, I have comfortably survived my first wholly sub-zero ride, got SOS Children’s Villages onto the television news again, and hugged both a tree and several very good-looking young men. Sadly however, all the but the tree were married…

The ride from Hamilton to Oakville was the first one I've done that never left urban areas: not my favourite kind of riding...

I got to see the Georgetown Christmas lights with the snow falling: oooh, it felt so Christmassy

The ride to Guelph might have been sub-zero, but it was ever so pretty

This wasn't the tree I hugged, but it was a rather lovely one: in the grounds of the University of Guelph

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Woodstock to Brantford:
Distance: 49 km
Ascent: 198 m
Cycling time: 3 hours

Brantford to Hamilton:
Distance: 42 km
Ascent: 161 m
Cycling time: 2 hours, 52 minutes

OK, let’s see if I can get all the way to the end of this entry without talking about the weather…

One question I’ve been asked fairly frequently as I’ve made my way around southern Ontario is, “you won’t be going on the highway, will you?” This area of Canada – being one of the very few parts of the country with enough people in it to justify it – has a network of roads very similar to the freeways in the States, or motorways in the UK. That is to say, the sort of roads that a cyclist would not want to be on, even if they were allowed to be. Which, as far as I’m aware, they’re not. But they certainly do seem to be the roads that all vehicle drivers think of first when considering getting from A to B round here, which is just fine by me, as it leaves all the other roads much, much quieter.

Quiet enough, in fact, to hear a strangely unfamiliar noise coming from Ranger’s sparkly new rear wheel. I was in no doubt that John at Courtesy Bicycles had done a good job, but I did worry that maybe something wasn’t bedding down quite right, so I visited The Bicycle Shop in Brantford (yes, that’s what it was called) just as soon as I could – to be told that I had some dead leaves caught under my rear fender. Yeah, like that wasn’t embarrassing at all…

And since I’m not talking about the weather, let me instead wax lyrical about how lovely the Brantford to Hamilton rail trail is. I was able to complete almost my entire journey between these two cities without seeing a single car – or indeed, many other people at all, since for some reason, there didn’t seem to be a huge amount of interest in getting out and enjoying the scenery on this particular day (actually, there was just one reason really, I think, but I’m not talking about that…) The trail really is very beautiful, even at this time of year, and in the fall, I suspect it would be utterly stunning. Just don’t let anyone tell you that it’s paved: it’s not (at least, not for the vast majority of the way). It’s a good surface, indeed considerably less afflicted by potholes than many of the (paved) streets in downtown Hamilton, but it does provide more rolling resistance than pavement – especially when it’s wet with snow…

Damn – almost made it…

At first, I thought this was just a 'standard' war memorial in the centre of Brantford, but it turned out to be in honour of the local First Nations who had sided with the British against the Americans in the Revolutionary War and the war of 1812; the statues were cast from melted down guns, apparently....

No, don't look at the white stuff: look at how beautiful and peaceful the trail is!

Hamilton is built on the Niagara escarpment (yes, the thing that the Niagara Falls fall over), so there are numerous flights of steps to allow pedestrians to get from the lower town to the 'mountain'; these ones were even suitable for bikes - but sadly, not trikes

Interesting rooflines in Hamilton city centre

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London to Ingersoll:
Distance: 40 km
Ascent: 245 m
Cycling time: 2 hours, 16 minutes

Ingersoll to Woodstock:
Distance: 20 km
Ascent: 75 m
Cycling time: 1 hour, 3 minutes

Anyone who’s been reading the statistics at the beginning of each of these blog entries will have noticed that my journeys have been getter rather shorter just lately. Anyone who knows this part of southern Ontario will have also noticed that my stops have now started to coincide with those of the main trains around here. And as anyone who’s noticed how much planning goes into this journey might have guessed, this is entirely deliberate. Not being equipped with a direct line to the weather gods (although, if anyone knows of a service provider who could get me hooked up, I’d definitely be interested in negotiating a package…), I figured I would try and keep the journeys shorter so that – if the weather was really unpleasant – I wouldn’t have to be out in it for quite so long, and I planned my route to go to places that public transport also went to so that – if the weather was really, really unpleasant – I would still have an alternative means of getting to where I was going.

So far, though, the weather’s been fine! Here I am, at the end of November, and I’m not even in my thermals yet! It’s getting to the stage where the locals are starting to talk about how unusually good the weather is for this time of year, though, so I have no doubt that my luck is going to run out – and probably fairly soon – but I’ve certainly been making the most of it for as long as it lasts. The rain (note, ‘rain’, not ‘snow’…) even very co-operatively confined itself to my non-cycling day in Woodstock, which curtailed my plans to check out the rather interesting-looking trail system around the Pittock Reservoir, but did create the perfect environment for sitting in front of the computer – doing more planning! Let’s just hope the weather gods were paying attention to the schedule I was working out for next year…

Oh, and for anyone who was thinking of commenting on how my entries seem to be obsessed with the weather at the moment: just try cycling in Canada at this time of year and see how obsessed you get!

This is prime farming country, so this was typical of the scenery I was passing. As in so many other places, though, some of the best soils in the land are fast disappearing under urban development

The outhouse as museum exhibit! I made use of I-don't-know-how-many of these out in the wilds of western Canada, but here in civilized southern Ontario, it seems that people need to have them explained!

I'd never seen a red pistachio before, so naturally, I had to ask... Apparently, 'back in the day', Canadians wouldn't eat pistachios because they thought their natural green colour meant that they were mouldy. So someone came up with the cunning wheeze of dying them red, and suddenly they were a hit. Until people started to worry about how bad for you the dye was, of course... So now you can get both colours!

It's not just Milton Keynes that has concrete cows! Woodstock used to be a big dairying area, and this statue commemorates a local record-breaking milk producer - record-breaking by 1930s standards, at least... (and yes, the statue really is made of concrete!)

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Leamington to Tilbury via Point Pelee:
Distance: 73 km
Ascent: 145 m
Cycling time: 4 hours, 10 minutes

Tilbury to Highgate:
Distance: 71 km
Ascent: 211 m
Cycling time: 3 hours, 41 minutes

Highgate to Glencoe:
Distance: 35 km
Ascent: 106 m
Cycling time: 2 hours, 4 minutes

Glencoe to London:
Distance: 46 km
Ascent: 300 m
Cycling time: 3 hours, 48 minutes

Oops – got a little behind here, haven’t I?! Sorry about that, folks! All good stuff though: just lots of people to talk to about SOS Children’s Villages taking up all my time!

Snow is already blanketing certain parts of Canada, but down here in the ‘banana belt’ (as Canadians affectionately call this area of southern Ontario), there have still been some days when it’s been seriously debatable whether or not I really needed to wear my coat! It has been windy though: I’ve had headwinds and tailwinds, but almost always strong winds, even after I left the pancake-flat plains of Essex county for the more rolling scenery towards London.

Fortunately, however, the worst weather I’ve encountered so far (still dry, but very strong and cold headwinds) was on my way into London. And I say ‘fortunately’, because the chill winds that forced me to bundle up behind my face mask also made a great story for the CTV London news crew that covered my arrival: to the accompaniment of images of me doing my Invisible Man impression, the newscaster did a very good job of getting the message out about SOS Children’s Villages to the largest television audience I’ve managed to get the charity in front of so far.

Hopefully, the more insane and suffering I looked, the more people sat up and took notice, but (promise you’ll keep this a secret?), I was actually perfectly comfortable inside all my cold weather gear. The headwinds certainly gave the cameraman a rather longer than expected period of time in which to find me on the road, but the advice that one of my new friends from this journey gave me about mosquitoes applies equally well to headwinds, I think: “Zen or bust, baby, zen or bust…!”

Ranger at Point Pelee ('peely'), the most southerly point of the Canadian mainland (there are a couple of islands in lake Erie that are further south, but the Point made the point for me, I reckoned )

I've seen many, many red-tailed hawks on my rides, but they don't normally stick around to have their photo taken like this!

Alas, I am but a shadow of my former self...
Enjoying the evening sunshine on the way into Tilbury

Christmas decorations have been starting to appear since the day after Halloween here, but things are definitely hotting up (or should that be 'cooling down'?!) for the festive season now. This is the old railway station in Glencoe

The Thames in London (yes, you may have noticed: the early settlers were impressive in many ways, but being able to come up with original names was not one of those ways...)

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Amherstburg to Essex:
Distance: 27 km
Ascent: 56 m
Cycling time: 1 hour, 24 minutes

Essex to Leamington:
Cycling time: 0

As you know, I spend huge amounts of time planning and organizing this journey so that everything goes smoothly and SOS Children’s Villages gets the best possible benefit from my being out here, but just sometimes, things end up turning out wonderfully neatly without any help from me at all…

The first part of the story isn’t especially neat, just inevitable: after almost a year and a half of pedalling, Ranger’s chain was as worn out as I think most of us would be after 11,000 km of going round in circles. Equally inevitably, his rear gear cassette was worn down and in need of replacement too. And that’s where the only not-particularly-neat part of the story comes in: part of the reason I went with an ICE trike was because of their sales pitch that all the components are standard – the trike itself might look a bit weird, but any bike shop would recognize, and be able to fix, any of its parts. Turns out, however, that this isn’t entirely true…

A lot of people think I must need a special chain for Ranger when they see how long it is, but actually, that’s just three perfectly normal bike chains all linked together. The rear gear cassette, however, is custom-made by ICE, and not only are replacements not available from anywhere other than an ICE dealer, but you also need a special tool to get the old one off. Thus, after investigation of the costs and shipping times for the custom cassette plus tool, the decision was taken to simply replace the whole rear wheel, complete with new, standard-issue, gears.

So here’s where it starts to get unexpectedly wonderful: my host in Tecumseh just happened to be good friends with the owner of Courtesy Bicycles in Windsor – a very knowledgeable and kind man who not only offered to do the work for free, but also knocked 25% off the cost of the parts. Then my angel of a host in Amherstburg just happened to have a van big enough to transport Ranger, and a heart big enough to pick him up from Essex (where I was by the time the new wheel arrived), and deliver him back to me in Leamington once the work was done. And then to top it all off, she also covered the remaining 75% of the bill!! Being without my trusty steed on the day I was due to cycle to Leamington could have been a big problem, of course, but at the last minute, I just happened to get an invitation to speak to the Essex Rotary Club that evening, and the president of the club just happened to live near Leamington, so was happy to give me a ride to my next destination. And that just happened to be on the only day of really bad weather I’ve seen lately, but thanks to all of the above, I just happened to not have to cycle through it!

Still more wind turbines! The environmentalist in me rejoiced, the cyclist in me was just glad that the resource being harvested was going the same way as me for once...

The life-blood of Leamington is indeed red: ketchup red. Apparently, the area boasts the largest number of greenhouses in the country, and from what I saw, I find that entirely believable

Leamington ('LEEmington') doesn't have a spa, but it does have a rather popular lakefront; from the look of the beach cabins, though, anyone would think they were expecting Lake Erie to produce some bad weather in the next few months...

Many of Leamington's inhabitants are Mennonite, but there is also a large Italian population there, and this was one of their mausoleums, lit up in memory of lost loved ones and backlit by the glow from the ever-present greenhouses

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Belle River to Tecumseh:
Distance: 53 km
Ascent: 180 m
Cycling time: 3 hours, 23 minutes

Tecumseh to Amherstburg:
Distance: 47 km
Ascent: 149 m
Cycling time: 2 hours, 55 minutes

Actually, it’s considerably less than 53 km from Belle River to Tecumseh, but just because Tecumseh was basically meant to be a rest stop, it doesn’t mean I wasn’t still getting the word out about SOS Children’s Villages! So, after leaving Belle River, I first pedalled all the way into downtown Windsor for interviews with the local paper and radio station, before doubling back on myself and inadvertently taking one of the main thoroughfares of the city (Tecumseh Rd East) back out to my hosts’ house – in the middle of the rush hour. Oh well! It wasn’t actually that bad: in fact, the only potential ‘incident’ I had was when a pedestrian blithely stepped off the curb right in front of me. Fortunately, however, at least one of us was looking where we were going, so I was able to brake and avoid her without any problem…

After a good rest in Tecumseh, I was all set and ready for the nice ride down to Amherstburg: particularly nice because most of it was to be along bike paths. What I wasn’t ready for, however, was the snow! Yes, I have now been officially anointed with the first flakes of the season! The only ‘s’ word in the forecast had been ‘sun’, so everyone was caught a little off guard, but fortunately, the shower was brief and light, and I’d already taken to packing my winter mittens and face mask in easily grabbable locations, so apart from the fact that this gave me the opportunity to conclusively prove that the anti-fogging spray for my glasses does not work, I sailed through the snow in almost perfect comfort.

And the next day, we were back to double-digit temperatures and sunshine again, so my weather luck still hasn’t quite run out…!

Heading into Windsor along the waterfront from Belle River, I saw what I think must be the greatest concentration of monster-sized status homes I've ever seen in my life!

Honestly: there were miles of them! And even the recent beating that the automotive industry - and consequently, the Windsor economy - has taken doesn't seem to have slowed their spread...

Look directly north from the Windsor waterfront and you see - the United States! Apparently, this is the only place where you can do this. As you can see, the Detroit river is still a very active shipping lane too

Windsor has made very good and attractive use of its waterfront: this was one of the sculptures in the sculpture park (which you could cycle through!), with the Ambassador Bridge in the background (apparently, the busiest border crossing in north America)

Whether I just spent too much time admiring the sculptures, I'm not sure, but contrary to my original schedule and general policy, it was getting rather dark by the time I crossed the Canard river on my way to Amherstburg. But at least it had stopped snowing!