Day 35 – Nipigon to Neys 106 miles

A tough day in the office!

After cooking breakfast Taso, Don, One Sock Bob and I set off to perform sweep duties.

Our first stop was only 2km away, Don has spent his formative years in Nipigon and wanted to go back and see if it had changed, after a 30 second tour of the town we concluded it had not.

Whilst there Don was interviewed about his experiences and Taso also had a brief conversation with a family of bears all of which was captured on video for further dissemination.

After Nipigon we had to get a move on as there were no services for about70km other than a small shop.

The terrain was challenging and within 30 km the hills began to appear one after the other and they were big!

Although the hills were shorter than in BC they were at times much steeper and we were in granny gears for long periods of the day and for most of the day we were battling against fairly stiff head winds.

The payback for the climbing was some fantastic views of Lake Superior as we wound our way around the lakeside.

We stopped for lunch in pretty village called Rossport, I had a blackened chicken burger and salad, the restaurant had had our groups before so were ready for us with water for bottles etc which was handy. We had to wait for all the others to leave ahead of us so Taso grabbed the chance of 40 winks, we tried to sneak off but he heard us and woke up.

The climbing took its toll on me though late in the day as I nearly bonked at about 120km, luckily I recognised the symptoms and we were only a couple of KM’s from food so we all stopped and gulped down a  12” Subway and lots of drinks.

In total today we did over 5000ft of climbing which is our biggest day by far. It was made much more difficult because of the need to keep at the back of the pack, we must have stopped and waited for riders at least 20 times during the afternoon and we ended up doing an 11hr day which in honesty was probably 3 hours longer than necessary. The problem is you can’t ride at your usual comfy pace and you end up using much more energy. 

|To cap it all today was also a bad hair day!

Today’s camp site is on the shore of Lake Superior, so far Mozzy free but because I was so late in I have only really had time to put my tent up shower and feed before its time to hit the sack. 

Tonight meals was also disappointing, whilst there was plenty of it they didn’t have the right ingredients available again; macaroni cheese without enough cheese is just macaroni. I don’t know why but for some reason it seems the poor meals always seem to coincide with the longest days.

Onwards and Upwards!