When Kim told that she wanted to ride on this route for a long time, I didn’t quite get what is so special about it. She was referring to a ride up in the North East Kingdom. Then when we started in Hardwick and began to ride, the setting felt surreal.
The first 20-30miles of the ride was so silent. Must be because it was a Sunday morning and the church kept most people off the roads. The traffic was virtually zero. The lakes were still. The sky was majestic and calm. But for the headwinds that compensated for the lack of any ‘big’ hills, it was so peaceful.
We had a couple of detours that offered a bit of history lessons. First one was at a nice little castle in Irasburg and the second one was at a ‘Runaway Pond’. Especially, the second one, at the ‘Runaway Pond’ aka ‘Dry Pond’ aka ‘The Long Pond’, was a rejuvenating experience.
After getting energized by cooling off at that cool spring of water, I was pleased with myself for a while thinking that I was finishing strong despite the heavy headwinds. Only later did I realize that I was on a downhill home stretch after a long stretch of climbing on false-flats. The headwinds were so strong.
At one point in the ride, we were just 16miles away from Canada. May be we should have taken another detour. 🙂
Here are the photos:
Stats:
Distance: 105.5km
Time: 4hrs32mins
Avg: 23.3kmph
Century number seven for the Bulldog.
 |
| The Bulldog at the dry-pond |
Incidentally, with this ride, my Bulldog has completed 1000miles since its birth on May 1st this year. 1045.6miles/1673km as of today. It’s the best impulse buy I’ve made so far.