Niagara Bike Tour

I headed off last weekend with a group of 5 other people from Bike Sauce to tour around the Niagara Wine region. I installed a rack and loaded up Millie, the thoroughly modern Fiori Roma, with panniers and a sleeping bag, then attached a cart and headed out. We took a train from Toronto to Burlington (to skip all the ugly suburbs) and took parts of the waterfront trail and parts of the wine road to maximize the beauty and potential alcohol consumption of the ride.  Here are some pictures of the trip:

Riding buddies (left to right) - me, James, Chris, Andrew, Michelle, Alex

Winery number one - look like you like each other!

I should point out that Puddicombe, the first winery we visited, had a fantastic merlot. I stupidly didn't buy a bottle, thinking that a) $17.50 is a little steep and b)I might be able to find something equal but cheaper elsewhere. Bad call, and they don't sell that one to the LCBO.  Oh well, next time...

After Puddicombe, we traveled up mountainview road, which really looked like the Sonoma County wine region I forgot I missed so much.

Grape vines and bicycles, who could ask for more?

Taken with a car's trunk as a tripod, hence the angle

The second winery also made mead, which I'd been dieing to try for ages.  Their cherry mead is very good, but I think their regular honey mead is better, I recommend.

We had been planning on enjoying the Organized Crime winery; however, when we arrived, it turned out that they only had whites, their fridge wasn't working, the bottles and tastes were expensive, and the name came from thieving Methodists, not the Ontario mafia, as we (or maybe just the royal we) were hoping. We skipped the hell out of there, and came upon our final winery for the day, the East Dell (I think) Winery, which had very good wine at bike tourer prices.

The happy lushes, many wine tastes down

After stocking up on our evening's supply and ogling the bride in a low-cut top taking pictures below the rear window, we headed to our campground.

Everything after went something like this:

Before wine

Before wine

After wine!

How much wine?

This much wine

The lack of pictures from dinner and the campfire until the next morning about parallels my memory for that time...

Riding back, some of us were a little floored:

Bikes keep left, Egyptians keep right

Total kms: 120. Total bottles of wine consumed: 9. Total horizontal trackstands: 1. On the whole, a fantastic weekend and definitely a trip worth repeating.

Oh, and a video of the journey made by Alex Baravyan-Gauthier:

Biking Niagara from Alex BG on Vimeo.