Leamington to London

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...)