Introduction

So, at Christmas when I call Canada for the season’s greetings stuff, I first hear that there’s going to be another wedding in the summer. When I was at the wedding last summer I had thought it would be great to get a bike and trundle around, so this time, with months to plan it seemed too good an opportunity to miss.

As I started to research it became clear that it would actually make more sense to buy a bike rather than rent, as the cost would be roughly the same, and if it was my own I could take it out of the Province and Country, which is harder to do with a rental bike.

The distances are huge, and I’d planned to cover a lot of ground, so it meant a lot of miles, and less time doing touristy things, which suited me fine. I started out with the route, and refined it over the coming months, adding as I read more about great roads, and discarding things as it just wasn’t practical.

I’d been working on a contract for a bank, thinking I could end it in the summer, but was then offered the chance to change to a new project. I’d said straight away that I’d planned to take a month off in the summer, so it wasn’t very practical for me to start something new, but the nice folks I worked with had a think about it and agreed that if I started in the new role I could still have a month off.

So with that sorted I now couldn’t not do it.

The rough route is starting in Brampton, head off after the wedding to the Cornwall border crossing, then go down through New York state, Vermont, New Hampshire, and into Maine to briefly visit Bar Harbor, then on to New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, Labrador, Quebec, and back to Ottawa in Ontario.

The leap of faith part relates mostly to the bike, as it’s a complete unknown. Normally you’d spend months prepping, testing, refining, but this time I’m just going to turn up, get on and go.