Day 35 – Simcoe to Niagara Falls, Ontario

First, apologies for failing to press the publish button late last night. My bad. So please don’t overlook yesterday’s post. And then read on below…

Day 35: I cycled another 80 fantastic miles today, right along the north eastern Lake Erie shore, and then along the Welland Canal to reach one of the tackiest places I know. Niagara Falls (at least on the Canadian side) is like a poor man’s Las Vegas, or perhaps more like Blackpool. Except it has the falls, which changes everything.

Despite the best efforts of man to ruin the hinterland, there is no denying that the falls themselves are absolutely magnificent and worth all the effort of getting here. Apart from a brief glimpse when I first arrived, I have so far just seen them illuminated in an ever-changing array of colours. Even from quite a distance away, they are magnificent. You hear the roar and feel the spray in the air from afar. You can’t get very close. But you don’t need to. And however long you look, and however many pictures and videos you take, you always feel you have not done it justice. Which, of course, you haven’t.

I’m looking forward to more daylight falls action tomorrow. There won’t be much cycling to do. But I do have an international frontier to cross at some stage, and then a hotel to find and a rendezvous to make. Other than that it is basically a rest day – the last one planned before New York City. It is well earned. I calculate I have cycled 985 miles since my bike was serviced in Minneapolis 12 days ago. And so it is perhaps no surprise that I found myself in a bike shop today. Twice.

I discovered my back tyre was flat this morning in Simcoe. I suspected I might have a very slow puncture yesterday; but after I put a bit more air in it rode just fine, so I wasn’t quite sure. Now I could be. Luckily there was a bike shop two streets away from my accommodation, so before anything else, I popped in and got fully inflated. They had a couple of Nottingham-built Raleigh bikes in for servicing, which took me back in time. As a student I lived for a time quite near the old factory, when it was still working. Now it is all a swish new university campus, bearing the Raleigh name. But no bikes are made there today, sadly.

My first cycling move today was back to the Lake Erie shore at a town called Port Dover. Rain had been forecast for this morning but instead we just got clouds and a helpful breeze blowing off the lake. The waters today were more of a green grey colour with bigger waves; but that didn’t stop a couple of brave souls from having a swim. I watched from the beach cafe where I had a fishy brunch of clam chowder and a couple of pieces of Lake Erie perch.

The warm breeze whisked me along and for many miles the small lakeside road hugged the water’s edge, passing a continuous ribbon of very modest lake homes. There was nothing fancy and you couldn’t have been closer to the lake for uninterrupted views. Yet weirdly, despite the many homes, I saw not a single shop, bar, pub or anything else in 15 miles of lake front communities.

By the end of that I was ready for lunch. I had stopped once to add air to my back tyre, and that was when I noticed how threadbare it had become. Not good. But not altogether surprising after not far off 3,000 miles of cycling with rear panniers. It was time to replace it with a new one. As luck would have it, the very next town, Dunnville, had a rare bike shop right in the centre. Perfect. So while a I ate lunch in a vegan cafe called Minga, a kind man replaced both tyre and inner tube, and I was ready to go again. Seamless. He was fooled by my brakes being set up the British way, with the front brake to the right. Beware if you ever rent a bike in North America. The brakes are the other way around!

The next section of riding was through flat lands away from the lake and it felt like I was back in Lincolnshire, especially when a long road, running alongside a drainage channel filled with water lilies, arrived at a small village called Wainfleet. Beer lovers may know that Wainfleet in Lincolnshire is the home of the very excellent Bateman’s Brewery, about to celebrate its 150th anniversary. I am rather partial to a pint of XXXB and I wondered if there was anything similar in its Canadian namesake. There wasn’t much here. But there was a luxury chocolate shop, obviously. So I went inside and used it as an excuse to spend up the very small amount of Canadian currency I had on my person, before I leave the country tomorrow. Perfect.

The mighty Welland

Then I followed the dyke another five miles until arriving at a broad -some would even say mighty – river that also took a Lincolnshire name. This was the River Welland, and it took me to a large town of the same name, where I came to a very tall lifting bridge over the even bigger Welland Canal, linking together Lakes Ontario and Erie for big ships. I couldn’t cross the bridge because it was one-way only, coming towards me. I couldn’t work that out, but it didn’t matter because I was presented with a very nice cycle path along the canal bank, taking me in the right direction. Lots of people were out sculling on the calm water and I decided this was all meant to be. And then it got even better.

At a point that looked like everywhere else, I saw a sign for a free pedestrian and bicycle ferry, open until dusk. This took me over to Port Robinson. It was great fun and I was clearly giving the ferry lady something to do. I noticed old photographs by the jetty and it became clear that a large bridge stood here until 1974, when it was hit by a passing ship when it failed to raise in time, bringing it catastrophically down into the water. No one was badly injured; but the entire bridge was scrapped. There are some pretty cool old photos on Google images. The ferry people also mentioned 2 large ships colliding here in 2020 (see YouTube). And to complete the set, in 2001 another ship was reduced to scrap when the Allanburg bridge, just a few miles north, was lowered onto a passing bulk container, which then caught fire.

I made it safely across and soon I was staring in wonder both at Niagara Falls and at the competing tall buildings that cluster on the bluff above the gorge, trying to offer rooms or restaurants with a view. It’s pretty ugly.