Day 20 Toronto to Cheltenham

Tuesday 8th June
Daily mileage 39miles Average Speed 10.7mph Ride Time 3hr34min

This morning we had to get organised and hence we were pretty late on leaving. We had decided to ship home some excess clothes and our cooking stove which made my bike 2kg lighter which is always a good thing. We attempted to pump up our tyres and unfortunately my front tyre did not like it very much and deflated! A quick change of inner tube as it was irreparable unfortunately and we were on our way. We were chauffeured by Hannah and her niece out of the city on lovely paths through high park and along the lake shore until we were shown the Mississauga Road heading North West. Guess what… there was a NW wind although not so strong.
This road was slightly undulating and seemed to get fairly busy with trucks whizzing past our left side a bit too close for comfort some times. The hard shoulder was a mere 2ft wide and Kris had to have colourful words with a truck driver who told us we should not be on the road despite all the signs that say cycles and cars share the road! Although route 1 was quieter than route 10, we met some more cyclists who showed us to another road running parallel that was even quieter and we were gutted we had not come across it sooner as it was a lovely pleasant ride.
We had not followed it for too long when we needed a fuel stop after 40 miles or so. We stopped at a nice café at 4pm and grabbed a coffee, sandwich and ice cream when we got chatting to Terry who was also on an ice cream stop. We chatted for over an hour and he tore us out the relevant pages from his map that were a lot more detailed than our free maps. Thanks that will be a great help! We also chatted to Pat, the lady working at the café and asked if there was anywhere we could camp in the area. She offered us her yard to camp in or the spare bed in her basement. She just so happened to also live on the river and just a stone throw around the corner. Perfect and thanks so much for your kind hospitality!