Day 74: Toronto, ON -> Coburg, ON

Date: Friday, July 28, 2023
Start: Toronto, ON (Warm Showers host)
End: Coburg, ON (East Coburg Campground)
Distance: 103km (153km with GO Train)

We woke at our host's house and immediately set about packing and having breakfast.  We needed to get out quick because our host was going to work, but also because there were heat warnings for the day.  To get half way to our next visit we had to do about 150km for the day.  And half of that was city riding which is surprisingly slow because of traffic, stop signs and traffic lights, and the constant need to check your phone to navigate.  It would a long, hot day if we biked the entire way.

So we didn't.  I had done a bit of research and found that if we took the GO Train (a train that operates in the GTA) we could get to the edge of the GTA and not have to bike as far in the heat.  So that's what we did!

We started by heading downtown past landmarks like High Park, Ossington, Kensington, Sneaky Dees, and any number of Toronto institutions.  We headed into downtown to see some of the sights.  First stop was Queen's Park, the provincial legislature.

Next we headed to Nathan Phillips Square in front of Toronto City Hall and took pictures with the iconic Toronto sign!

From here we jumped over to take pictures in front of Massey Hall, an absolute institution of Canadian music history.  So many live performances from this space have been recorded and released to critical acclaim that many people know the name Massey Hall without actually knowing where it is!  My personal favourite is Neil Young's 1971 Live At Massey Hall which was only released in 2007.

From here we popped by the iconic Roy Thomson Hall for another quick look.

We then biked down to Front Street and snapped another few pictures in front of CBC Headquarters and the statue honouring Glenn Gould, another Canadian institution!

We then headed down the street to Union Station to catch the train.

We grabbed a quick bite to eat while we navigated our way to our train, which we boarded at 11:30am.  We spent the next hour riding the train across the Eastern stretch of the GTA thankful we didn't have to do 50km in the heat and humidity of urban sprawl!

We arrived in Oshawa at 12:30 and set off trying to find our way out of the area.  It didn't take long before we were on a pathway and biking in the shade of trees through a park near Lake Ontario.  We spent an hour or two going between pathways and roads, but the traffic wasn't bad and we were out of the denser parts of Oshawa.  We approached the Darlington Nuclear Power Station and stopped for lunch at an A&W.  On hot days like this, it's important to have some air conditioning to be able to stomach your lunch.  Otherwise the heat ensures you have no appetite.

After lunch we continued and were on pathways and roads again, but this time through rural countryside.  We passed tall corn whose tassels and silks were obvious, a sure sign that we're in the late part of summer.  The wheat fields continued as well, and it was a glorious ride through pastoral countryside with Lake Ontario ever present in the distance.  Since leaving the Niagara Peninsula we've seen more and more apple orchards, and this region was thick with them.

The longer we cycled, the further we got from Toronto and enjoyed wide open country roads that we had almost entirely to ourselves.

The first town we reached was Port Hope, Ontario.  It was here we learned that our original campground we intended to stay at was full, but found another further outside of Coburg.  We stopped for a bubble tea and found a monument to Farley Mowat, a Canadian author of some reputation and - I'm overusing this term - another Canadian institution!

We continued to Coburg where we eventually found our campground.  It was getting later in the evening, but we'd made it 150km (including 50km on the GO Train) for the day and had managed to survive the heat and humidity.  We were expecting rain at about 8pm and so showered and had dinner at the campground.  Skipper saved me by having a spare instant mashed potatoes.

The rain didn't materialize and was pushed back to about midnight-2am.  We went to bed with our tent flies on but it was still very humid and hot (around 25C) and I was melting in my tent.  Confident that it would cool once it rained, I got a lot of broken sleep.

And the rain never materialized...