The last two days have been spectacular weather. Clear skies, sunny and about 22-23°C so we have taken advantage of it and done two different types of biking adventures.
Yesterday we did more trail riding. Stanton Mountain rises behind the town of Ladysmith so we just have to bike to town and access a web of trails on the mountain. Bill did a great job of finding our way and we did a 20 km ride on a variety of trails. We went up and we went down. Trails through the forest, over roots and stones, grass path through meadows, loose gravel paths along access roads. Some wider than others. The narrow single track trail with a steep descent we decided to walk down, glad that we were not pushing the heavy e-bikes UP that section. We had a blast and loved picking our line around the obstacles and being in the quiet woods. It’s totally different than road biking. Even the ride to the trail head is lovely. Ladysmith is such a picturesque town with views to the inlet and/or mountain views with many houses at a higher elevation than we are. Stats showed that we climbed a total of 438 m of elevation over the 20 km. We could not have done it without the e-bikes.
We enjoyed some R&R on the deck after the ride!
Today since I have the full day off we decided to do a longer ride from Ladysmith to Genoa Bay for lunch. There is a great cafe in the marina so it makes a great objective for the ride. It’s 73 km round trip ride with LOTS of hills up and down. We took the trail to Chemainus and shortly after that we transferred to the road. Roads here are in such better condition than Ontario. The pavement does not experience the frost heave and the shoulders are generally wide and paved so they are great for biking. Some hills were pretty steep but we just added a boost from the battery assist and we could enjoy the ride. I am in awe of bikers that can do these routes with regular bikes. We will stick with our e-bikes. We can do a long trip like this with hundreds of meters of elevation (stats say 900m but I’m not sure that is accurate) and still enjoy it and have some (emphasis on the some) energy when we get back home. We saw marinas, hills, pulp factory, farms, lovely homes, and some forested sections. It’s always a varying landscape that is enjoyable from the speed of a bike. The view is lovely from the cafe, and lunch was delicious. We took some time to digest it before we attacked the climb out of Genoa Bay!
We did have to ward off some dangers!
Another great day of biking and we proved to ourselves that we can do almost anything around here on our e-bikes: trails, roads, hills of any size. I think I earned a glass of wine on the deck!
Life on the Island 