Day 50 – Wiarton to Thornbury (T.D.: 88.7km; S.T. 4h58min)

Willie was right. It was a perfect day in Bruce County today as we made our way down to Owen Sound from Wiarton. We’d been looking forward to Owen Sound for a while, ever since I did my M.A. paper on Group of Seven-era art and fell under the spell of a concept album written about Tom Thomson, who grew up in the area.

It is a lovely town, nestled in a beautiful Georgian Bay harbour, and is host to a Thomson art gallery, which we visited after having some peanut butter and honey sandwiches for lunch. The curator was impressed with us for having biked all the way to his gallery from Vancouver, but gave us a typically (for someone who doesn’t do much biking) poor assessment of how hilly the ride would be from Owen Sound to Thornbury. He said it would be “mostly downhill,” which was pure and unadulterated codswallop (and considering that both towns are at roughly the same elevation, downright illogical).

Of course, the ride was just as uphill as it was downhill, and on this particular route, it was plenty of both. Perhaps what this man was thinking of was one spectacular and lengthy downhill that gave Caroline her fastest clocked speed of the trip (60.7km/h – personally, I can’t seem to break 60, clocking in at 59.8km/h). In any case, we coasted into Thornbury and spent a wonderful night with our friend Jen Koen in her beautiful new house. Jen, not to be outdone by the wonderful cooks who’ve hosted us so far, whipped up a mean dinner for us, and thus earned her rightful place in our blog’s pantheon of fine-cooking hosts.

Stats:

Av. Spd.: 17.8km/h

Mx. Spd.: 60.7km/h

Best new development in the Tom Thomson mystery: This one: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/a-break-in-the-mysterious-case-of-tom-thomson-canadas-van-gogh/article1738779/