Kevin's Saturday solo southwest gravel ride

Saturday solo southwest gravel:

Saturday’s weather is looking alright; a moderate southwest wind, temperatures in the high single digits, and a small chance of rain in the afternoon.

Chris Angermann came up with this route. It’s got lots of flyby potential, and some cool features:

km 5: connector trail from Trussler to Mannheim

km 22: first flyby zone on river road. If someone is ~10 km ahead or behind, you should cross paths here

km 34.5: a really fun trail behind plattsville. It could be muddy this time of year.

km 42: a rail trail leaving Bright. it’s so fun it’s on the route in both directions.

km 77.5: 4 way corner, you might get lucky and see someone going the other way.

km 80.5: a no winter maintenance road that’s basically just an atv track. Lots of fun, and it’s still early enough in the season that it shouldn’t live up to it’s nickname: “mosquito alley”.

Full route:

I’ll be heading out on route sometime in the morning, probably 9ish. Chris is doing the route backwards. So if you’re out on route sometime, there’s a really good chance you’ll run into either of us, or anyone else doing the route. We may not be able to ride together, but it’s always nice to know that others are out on the same route as you. ☺

Here’s a medium and a short version of the route as well. If you’re time limited, or maybe riding from home and don’t want such a long route, these are good options, either in the direction posted, or backwards.

  • The medium route is still very close to the long route, but it cuts out a lot of the zig-zag flyby bits.
  • The short route shares much of the start and finish, but takes a shortcut through Wolverton, avoiding going far south like the longer ones.

All routes start and finish near the Williamsburg Town Centre plaza, so lots of parking if you want to drive to the start.

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In

For “Medium” distance at 9am Saturday. Then maybe a redo of nP2A Sunday.

When Medium = 100km of gravel. #Kevin :roll_eyes:

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BTW, the turn around km 5 onto the trail from trussler road is a bit sneaky, watch for it…

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“a bit sneaky”??? I rode past this thing so many times and I never realized there was a trail there!!! thanks for the photo, I would definitely just go past it again!

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That was a gift.

100km. First post vaccination ride.

Tested out the Salsa Cutthroat with Thunder Burts for http://www.bt700.ca this summer.

Saw different people at different times, going in different directions, and at different speeds, all out for a ride on this gorgeous May 1st weekend.

I saw Drew, Kevin, Thiago, Dave, Tina, Mark, Jim, Doug, Chris.

Pretty easy to maintain distance on gravel.

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Fantastic day out there. Did the medium distance. 6 Flybys (Doug, Brad, Alain, Drew, Dave and Chris). Great route Kevin and the Portuguese donuts at Lucios hit the spot.

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Awesome ride. I loved it. And I love this forum :slight_smile:

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Some Flyby shots from today. What a spectacular ride! Bridges, Gravel, Sunshine, good friends and Portuguese doughnuts. Life’s good.

image4

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Yeah. lying down on that bridge was a mistake. It took everything I had to get up from that prone position. But, I wanted to capture the beautiful grandeur of that old bridge.

NOTE: The picture I snapped was the one above the “donut pic” in my post above.

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What a fantastic route! Such an adventure and the weather was great. Although that wind picked up a bit in the afternoon and the head wind may have led to a few expletives (I had a late start). My very first 100 kms in the saddle. Thanks WCC!!!

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Looks awesome, Shame I missed the route!

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Yeah it really was a lovely day. I enjoyed the long route, even with a bit of doubling over on itself. Fortunately the really fun rail trail near bright was on the long route in both directions, which was cool.

Fittingly, Chris Angermann and I met up on one of the long-route-only features, the unmaintained section of Township Road 2, aka “mosquito alley”. It was actually in good shape, no mosquitoes, and not too muddy, so reasonably fast.

The only downside to the long route, aside from maybe missing a few more flybys, was getting to Lucio’s after they sold out of donuts. But not to worry, I’ve verified the Carrot Cake cupcakes are also delicious.

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Good pics! So glad to see this, I can’t quantify how much I miss this right now.

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I missed this ride due to my Track Certification at Milton Velodrome.
Looks like a lot of fun gravel ride and gorgeous pictures indeed.

Sammy,