Distance: 105km
Elevation: 582m
Despite a rough night with a lot of drunks singing, swearing, and shouting along to country music, I got up early and after a quick breakfast Shannon, Marco and I ventured off for the bridge to Prince Edward Island.
I am not used to cycling in groups so that was a new experience for me. They were both super fit, well rehearsed after 3 months in the saddle, and were about 2km/h faster than me.
That sounds like not much and you can compensate it with drafting to a certain degree but you do notice it uphill quite a bit.
They would go 100km per day and prebook every site during the day where I did around 120km and was no longer pre-booking anything.
We had good conversations and exchanged many stories from our tours. The two had cycled in New Zealand with heir two kids and also in France before. Impressive!
Both were lovely, intelligent, warmhearted people plus they were both super disciplined and they really made for good team together.
Shannon was more of the organizer and navigator. Marco did social media and tagged along otherwise. Also, they both seemed very close with their kids and would have calls with them in the evening.
It was fun to watch the dynamics between them. There did not seem to be much competition or tension going on between them.
After about 75km which we did in record time, we arrived at the southern side of the bridge to PEI.
Shortly after, a shuttle came to pick us up. We squeezed our bags in and the two found out that the young driver was also from the Ottawa region near Perth were they both lived. Small world.
We mounted the bikes on a rack that was rather wobbly and did not seem to be very trustworthy to me.
The Confederation Bridge to PEI has two lanes and is about 10km long. It was a pretty scenic drive to go across. Also, it felt super fast to be in a car again.
During the drive I could not look back. The sight of the bobbing bikes was just to scary for a German engineer.
We didn’t know why but we did not pay anything for the ride. How nice!
As we arrived in PEI, we went for lunch and ice cream afterwards. PEI is a vacation destination so everything is super full and pricy. It’s a bit of a culture shock for me.
After our break, we agreed to meet at a campground outside of Summerside. It was very hot and I wanted to go my own pace.
It is funny how my mental state changed when I was with other cyclists. All of a sudden, I delegated responsibility to Shannon and Marco and became a bit passive.
Also, with three bikes you have to look out for each other and can’t focus on the environment so much.
But maybe I am also a bit of an eccentric loner meanwhile.
Anyway, it was good to be by myself again and I took my time to do groceries, picked some apples from a tree by the road and got to the campsite around 4pm.
Shannon and Marco had an evening appointment with a friend and I had a quiet evening and watched the beautiful sunset over the sea.
Tomorrow, I would be staying with another Warmshowers host in Charlottetown, PEI. I was looking very much forward to using her washing machine. I felt that my stuff smelled like a wet dog meanwhile – phew.