Day 16: Milestones

Yesterday I passed the 1000km mark, and today I left Quebec and entered Ontario! Ontario is long though, so don't hold your breath for Manitoba.

It was another glorious day but not crazy hot. I cycled through a nature reserve, crossed the river in a small ferry and took the waterside route on a cracked tarmac road past huge, ugly new mansions with fantastic views. Then suddenly the quiet road I was on joined the highway. Huh?! I looked at the map to find I'd taken the wrong road. Not a disaster in terms of extra distance, but I had to choose between backtracking 10km and doing 3km of illegal highway then a lovely riverside road... 

The riverside road was gorgeous! I've almost forgotten how terrible the highway was. I continued through twee villages where mansions and retirement homes were next door to graveyards and grave stone engravers (happy times) and stopped for lunch by the river with the touring motorbikers. I saw a black squirrel having a tiff with a grey squirrel in someone's oversized garden (the black one won).

I had headwinds all day again but I only got annoyed with them once or twice on the straight sections of boring highway. If the wind was that strong the other way, I would have sailed into Ottawa around lunchtime. But it wasn't. Still, today was pretty, with fields and forests and the river, and little fluffy white clouds.

I spent most of the day below sea level! It was weird going uphill, watching the numbers on the altimeter go down. Was a while before I noticed the minus sign. I was as low as -45m at one point, which is confusing because I was by a river that presumably flows into the sea..?

My slight detour added a bit onto today's journey and I did about 90km to the town of Alfred, halfway between Montreal and Ottawa.