My brief respite in Toronto was over all too soon. I enjoyed being lazy and catching up on sleeping and eating, but it was not time to recommence my journey. Since I had broken my trip in Sarnia to come to Toronto, the plan was to head back to Sarnia and then cycle down through southern Ontario to Niagara Falls from where I would re-enter the USA to finish my trip. My parents kindly offered to drive me to Sarnia so early in the morning we started our trip. The first stop was the passport office where I collected my new Canadian passport: that will hopefully make entering the USA a bit easier.

My father has a typical ‘Yank Tank’ of a car. It is very large and designed for highway travel. It is very comfortable as it eats up the highway miles. You put it on cruise control and it just goes and goes. In Canada they have two seasons: winter and road construction. With the economy booming there seems to be more construction than usual and it was fascinating to see the different projects as we travelled to Sarnia. I saw something I had never seen before wherein they were doing a full depth reconstruction of on half of a divided carriageway and had put all the traffic in the oncoming lane of the other half of the road. A bit scary at times since Canadian drivers seem to travel very fast—but then having travelled 5000 km at 20 km/h driving at any speed in a car seems fast.

We reached Sarnia without any problems and I navigated us back to the railway station. Even though they have lived in Toronto for 35+ years, my parents hadn’t been to this part of the province before and were going to make an excursion of it by heading up to Bayfield on Lake Huron. We had a picnic lunch at the railway station and then posed for the mandatory photo just to prove that I did go back and restart where I caught the train.

I was then on my bike and heading east on Road 25. Since the train station was on the extremities of the town it did not take me long and I was out in the country. Not surprisingly, the land is much like Michigan but this part of Ontario is very flat and featureless. At least it is better than the desert areas in the USA I cycled through insofar as there are continuous farms intersperced with trees which is better than the barren scrub, but it was not exactly exciting.

The farms were very well kept with lots of red barns. The local practice seems to be that they put the names of the owners on the barns so you know who lives at the farm. Where the place differs from Michigan is in the absence of mobile homes. These are very common throughout the USA but here I only saw one or two. The farms looked prosperous and many had substantial honey-coloured brick houses which looked as though they dated back to the Victorian times.

I stopped in the town of Watford and called Lis. When I told her where I was she said that she didn’t realise I had gone to England since that is the name of an English city. Ha ha. In fact, the entire area is named after English places, reflecting the origins of its first settlers. I was in Middlesex County. There was Stratford on the Avon River (not surprisingly, home to the Canadian Shakespearean festival). The largest city is London and it is in Oxford county and on the Thames River. All very familiar to me.

I passed a large farm which had cut down a long row of trees adjacent to the road. I pondered the reason why they had cut them off about 1.5 m above the ground instead of at ground level. They looked to be maples so it was not so they could regrow. I found the answer later with a very interesting way of removing the stumps: by fire. As the photo below shows, they built an enclosure around the stumps and then by lighting a fire burned them off. Quite effective as I saw the ashes of one stump which had been removed below ground level.

Eventually I reached Highway 2 which was a major road heading into London. It was a lovely afternoon and I stopped by the side of the road at an intersection and had a short break. Three farmers drove up in a pickup truck and chatted to me. When I told them I had come through Iowa they asked what the corn was like and I told them there was a lot of it and it was much bigger than in Canada. They said that Iowa produces more corn than the whole of Canada, which was believable given what I saw.

The farms in this area grew corn, wheat and silage for animals. On many farms it was the day when the wheat was being harvested and I saw quite a few combine harvesters traversing the fields cutting the wheat. They are a sight to behold with the dust flying and these huge circular blades cutting a swath through the wheat. I saw them loading the harvested grain into trucks and as part of this exercise I was able to work out what some of the farm equipment I had seen was used for.

As I passed the fields I thought of Jesus’ parable about how the tares and the wheat should grow together until the harvest time. There would be these huge golden fields and then at irregular intervals you would see the heads of a large green weed poking through. Unlike in Jesus’ day, these were harvested with everything else but I wondered if afterwards the farmer went back and sprayed the weed. They left about 200 mm of the wheat stalk in the field so it would be easy to find the weeds again.

The farmers here follow the practice of their American cousins by having very interesting mailboxes. I had to say that the one below takes the award for the most interesting to date. It is built out of an old scale and is complete with fresh flowers!

While this place was first settled by the English, there seem to be a lot of Greeks who have moved here. I found a Greek restaurant in a trailer next to the road and had a very nice vegetarian pita sandwich. There were five others sitting at a picnic table and they were all in their late-teens and early 20s. They had obviously been swimming as they were still in their swimsuits and sported tans of those with lots of spare time. They were very friendly and we chatted about my travels and the area. I’m still waiting to find someone of that age who isn’t overwhelmed by the thought of lots of exercise. I know they must exist somewhere …

My map was given to me by my father and is about 10 years old. It showed Highway 2 as passing north of London. Well, the city has definitely expanded as it now passes through areas of housing developments and major shopping plazas. This seems to be the pattern throughout southern Ontario where there is development everywhere. London seems to be particularly civilised since there was an excellent cycle path next to the road which was quite busy with lots of traffic.

I found a Loblaws shop and went in to get some provisions. I was amazed at the array of health foods, fruits and vegetables that were available. By far the best that I have seen anywhere. There was everything I was looking for and more. Pity my carrying capacity was so limited, or possibly it was a good thing?

My target was the Fanshaw Conservation Area and eventually I came to signs directing me south from Highway 2. I saw two cyclists next to the road so stopped to ask directions. They had been mountain biking on trails and we chatted for a bit. There was an interesting contrast between them; she was slim and hardly breathing, he was about 40 kg overweight and could hardly talk. In fact, he looked so stonkered I thought he was going to collapse. Not surprising given that they had been biking in the river valley which looked pretty hard. They told me the campground was just ahead and since a storm was closing I was soon heading that way.

The campground was down a long drive across a dam on the Thames river. There were fisherman both on the dam and down in the river and I could see a number of canoes and boats out on the lake above the dam. This was surprising since by now the sky was pitch black and it was starting to rain. Perhaps I’m just a bit of a wuss. I paid the exorbitant fee of $19 at the office—the woman behind the counter worked as a policewoman and she said that with her job she cycles in London, throwing down her bike to arrest people.

The campground was massive with 400 places. It was also poorly signposted so I had some trouble finding my site. I was in a hurry since the rain was getting heavier. Fortunately, it was sheltered by trees and I was soon able to get my tent up. That was fortuitous since the skies opened and it just poured with rain for the next two hours. There was too much for the ground to absorb so I soon moved all my panniers into my tent and eventually parts of my floor were floating on puddles as I sat on my mat. It could have been worse; the area in my campsite where I should have put up my tent was underwater.

I stayed in my tent reading and trying to keep my gear dry until the rains abated. I had bought this very interesting book called ‘the Science of God’ which was written by a Physicist which was an excellent distraction. He uses Quantum Mechanics to show that one can reconcile the Biblical account of creation in six days with the fossil record. Good to have something heavy like this to challenge one; I’ve always found Quantum Mechanics hard to fathom.

Eventually the rains abated and I went and got some water before calling the office in N.Z. I then tried to sleep but this was unsuccessful for two reasons. Firstly, there were lots of young people talking loud into the night but secondly I was the subject of attention by a number of racoons looking for food.