After an absence of four years, out-of-town tours returned to the OBC with a visit to picturesque Westport, just a 90-minute drive south of Ottawa, from Tuesday May 14 through Friday the 17th. Seven hearty riders accompanied tour leader Andre Gauthier on the mid-week trip.
Rain wiped out any chance of a quick ride on arrival day afternoon so the group convened in the dining room of the stately Cove Inn to carbohydrate load and discuss ride options for the next day. Possibilities were endless but the group decided to start in style with a hearty hungry-man breakfast followed by an attack on the famed Westport Hill that has left many a seasoned rider demoralized. With the shock of the Hill out of the way, the rest of the 85 km route beckoned with only some major undulations to overcome. Around the 40 km mark the group split up with gravel specialists taking a slightly different route. The rest of us continued around Big Rideau Lake and through the villages of Lombardy and Portland, noted for its coffee shops, before heading back to Westport through the hamlet of Newboro.
With the Rideau Lakes Cycle Tour fast approaching, the group conscious decided that we had to up our game for our second full day and log a century (100km). We started out on the other side of Westport, which is a fair bit more civilized (flatter) and headed out to the very scenic Jones Falls, a key part of the Rideau Canal’s system of locks. Before getting there, new OBC rider Dan Cardamore invited the group to take a short detour to his cottage on Sand Lake, where we had a lengthy break for beverages and took in the spectacular view. The rest of the route took us through Lyndhurst and a stop at the legendary Bastard Coffee House in Delta before arriving back at the Cove Inn just in time for a wonderful dinner outside in the garden.
The tour wrapped up on the morning of Friday the 17th with some of the group heading right back to Ottawa after breakfast while others took in a short short gravel ride and others keen for more hills cranked out a quick 50 km out-and-back to Maberly.
As with many aspects of our lives post-Covid 19, things are not returning exactly the way the were before, and our calendar of out-of-town tours is no exception. But I think that everyone in the small group that participated had a great time and a big thank-you to Andre Gauthier for pulling this together.