Day 29 – Kenora to Calliper Lakes – 82 miles

Welcome to The Shield.

Dawn broke early and warmly in our hotel room and we looked out of the window to see that our camper friends had also had a warm and dry night.

Having checked out we returned to camp to be warmly abused by all present and nicknamed the princesses, my how people can change!

As we had ridden in we saw a Doe Deer and two Fawns grazing at the entry to the camp, I tried to get a photo but my zoom wasn’t brilliant, the Fawns were so dainty and alert, after a few minutes they just bounced off into the undergrowth

Tom was on cooking duty so Randy and I headed out with Tim and Don  for what was billed as a relatively easy day.

Soon after leaving Kenora we were into countryside, and a completely different type to that of the prairies. We were into what is known as the Canadian Shield which is essentially a huge block of granite, several hundreds of miles across, which dominates the countryside and provides a rolling tree laden horizon with literally hundreds of lakes of all shapes and sizes.

The riding is great but hard work as you are never level for any great period of time and constantly changing gears to cope with the seemingly endless climbs and descents.

Early in the day we came across “Andy Lake”, a small but very beautiful lake that I donated to the country some years ago and named in my honour, naturally we all had our photos taken to commemorate my visit.

We stopped for a brief coffee early on and then ploughed on for about 80km until we hit a small outpost called Sioux Narrows where we had a little light lunch and a look around the tourist tat shops and then got back on the road.

About 5km from home we pulled into a bar and had a couple of beers and then it was all ahead for the final push to the campsite in a National Park.

Tonight’s campsite was quite pleasant, amongst trees and with a lake only about 100 yards away. I had a quick dip in the lake, my first of the trip and it was very pleasant, jumped into a nice hot shower before heading back to my tent to sort out bedding etc.

It was about this time the local Mosquito air force decided it was time to attack. It was the worst I have seen, many people were bitten within an inch of their lives. My plan was to eat and then head for the tent and sanctity.

Dinner was a bit of a disaster as the vegetables bought some 4 or so days ago had gone rotten so we had a change of menu. We ended up with what were essentially either an egg or a tuna sandwich and some potatoes; I have to question whether that’s a real meal.

Tomorrow is a similar length ride; I understand the terrain will be similar for a couple of weeks so it will be another challenging day.

Today we passed 1800 miles at an average speed of 15.1 miles per hour and 120 hrs riding. My longest day was last Thursday when I was in the saddle for 7hrs14mins covering 108 miles about half of which was in torrential rain. All in all we have climbed 93000ft since Vancouver and we are yet to get half way!

Onwards and Upwards!