Last week was the longest and toughest seven days of my coast to coast to coast bicycle journey across Canada as you have probably read and to be honest, I wish that it stays so and that I only have better days ahead.
Week 14 was pretty relaxed compared to the previous one.
On Monday, I left Clarenville to cycle to St Peter’s, my second last ride to St John’s.
What a foggy morning!
But none of that was going to stop me from taking my obligatory pre-ride self-portrait
Oh and it was very windy.
But other than that, it was just an uneventful ride with some interesting sights along the way.
An almost real life moose…
A town with the most interesting name…
And then suddenly the fog disappeared leading way to a beautiful sunny but very windy afternoon.
In my whole life I have never been in a situation where within a few short minutes, the temperatures went from one extreme to another.
Look at the screenshot below taken from my GPS unit!
It felt like a curtain was opened. In seven minutes the weather went from foggy to sunny and the temperature reacted accordingly. I had to stop and get undressed because I went from freezing less than a hour prior to close to a heat stroke!
I am glad I have access to GPS data because no one believed me until I produced these results!
The scenery now looked like this
I kept on riding until I got to my destination
I don’t know what was it about this little town but I liked it a lot even if I was there for less than 12 hours.
In the morning, I woke up with a smile on my face.
Why? Well, I had one last ride before St John’s my ultimate Newfoundland destination.
No matter of crazy steep hills could bring my joy down.
I think at this stage I was only interested in what the signs indicated.
Remember when in my previous post, I wrote how almost discouraged I was when I saw that my ride across Newfoundland or Channel-Port Aux Basques to St John’s to be precise would be a 890 km adventure?
Well, 14 days later, I was on my last stretch and enjoyed watching the countdown along the Trans Canada Highway.
And here I was at the city limits. I had arrived but not exactly…
Another half an hour or so and I finally got to St John’s, Newfoundland
Oh happy day!!
I had a lot of time to kill so I cycled around the city to check it out a little bit.
The highlight was going to the Terry Fox remembrance site.
I wish I could say that beside that little visit I saw much of St John’s.
The truth is that I was totally tired and broke from my 14-day adventure that I was not in the mood for anything. I was almost morally defeated and just stayed indoors for three days until the day I left.
My only souvenir from St John’s was the chocolate from Newfoundland Chocolate Company, a local pride, that my host offered me and I ate it in the same so that did not last long.
Yes, I know that I end this in anti-climatic manner but it’s just the way I felt. I wanted to get off the island and carry on my journey in a more hospitable province.
I have to admit that Newfoundland was a difficult journey because my phone did not work here which is something I never even thought of and the fact that I went there before the travelling season started so everything was closed.
The weather did not help too but even if it almost killed me, I should have respected it more.
So a few days later, I got back on the ferry and I left Newfoundland with a promise to come back one day under better circumstances to visit my new friends and rediscover the province in a more friendly season.
In the morning I disembarked from the ferry back into Nova Scotia and to Cape Breton where my journey from Eastern to Western Canada was about to begin, part II of The Big Journey.