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Published: August 18th 2019
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A comfortable starting time this morning had us loop back to the storage facility after we rationalised down our luggage somewhat - especially me. Saving every gram of weight was an advantage so we cut back to the bare minimum of non-cycling clothes. Just a couple of shirts and shorts, one pair of pants and a jumper. Done!
We planned to take a route that went via the river to Maple Ridge and then head south to Abbortsford. What became obvious very early was our dependence on Google Maps, without it we would have been lost. Mind you even with Google Maps we managed to sill take a number of wrong turns.
We did get some great scenery along the river. Huge numbers of logs being floated down the river to the saw mill, a beautiful old trestle bridge and a disused swing bridge to name a few.
Our progress in the morning was horribly slow. We travelled a grand total of 30kms in the first 4 hours - on a day of 85km we needed to get a hurry on or we'd being arriving very late to Abbotsford. We decided we needed to come off the river
The bridge
This was a disused swing bridge. Each side was a tressel bridge. tracks to pick up speed and claw back some time. We picked up the pace and started to make some good time - until we got to New Westminster. As we arrived at a level crossing a goods train was rolling slowly past and we watched it crawl by for about 10 minutes. The guy working the tracks told us 1 stopped over the crossing for a hour last week. We thought we were on our way as the train finally cleared the crossing only to see another come from the opposite direction. We decided to back track a bit and carry our bikes up the stairs of a pedestrian bridge that went over the tracks. No sooner had we gotten to the top, the end of the train inched past and the crossing was open. AH well, lugging 30kg fully loaded bikes up the stairs was character building right?
We stuck to the main roads after New Westminster and that took us through Puttullo over an old iron "Through Arch" bridge that looked a little like the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It seemed to climb unnaturally higher than it needed to over the river. Making good progress now we
came to a town called Surrey. As with every town we came to we needed to navigate through making numerous turns (with Google as our guide). Maneuvering through the city streets we hadn't notice Tommy miss a set of lights and lose sight of us. Jeff went back to check and as he turned round the corner he saw Tom fly by the previous T-Intersection - in the wrong direction - up a hill. It took Jeff over a kilometer pedalling like crazy to catch him and bring him back on track. Tom's panier had bounced off his rack as he turned a corner and he missed us taking the next turn. It was actually very lucky Jeff saw him fly by otherwise we would have been separated without any way of contacting each other. We stayed much closer to each other after that. We made good time in the afternoon thankfully and made the hotel by 4:30pm. We had travelled 85kms in 8.5 hours. Not going to winn any segments on Strava with a time like that.
We'll need to be a lot more efficient than that on our way to Hope tomorrow.
For now Tom's very
excited, an All You Can Eat Buffet Breakfast is included in our room rate, so it could be a late start!
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Carmen Carra.
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Sounds like an interesting first day. What is the weather like? Safe travels on your second day. x