TOUGH GOING DUE TO TRAIL CONSTRUCTION
16 Mile Ride on the Erie Canalway Trail (Albion - Knowlesville)
Tuesday, July 2, 2019
Drove over to Albion this morning, figuring I'd head west and extend my mileage on my Erie Canalway Trail End-to-End-to-End quest by a bit. Medina is a round trip of about 22 miles from there, and I thought I might even manage Middleport (32 miles there and back.)
Except - the previously hard-packed trail had been clearly resurfaced recently. The first few miles weren't too bad - the stone dust was fairly well compacted - but then I hit a stretch where the surface was a lot looser and found myself working a lot harder than I'd expected. It certainly didn't help that I hadn't switch to my wider tires, though I'm not sure they would have made much of a difference.
A little over 6 miles down the trail, I passed the Knowlesville lift bridge, and hit a double whammy - even looser stone dust, and I could see construction equipment on the trail up ahead. So at that point I decided enough was enough and turned around to trudge back to Albion.
Once I got back I decided to try heading east for a while, just to get a few more miles in... again, nothing awful, but more difficult than I remember the trail being two years ago when Ann and I rode there. After a couple of miles I decided to call it a day and headed back to the car.
A little research reveals that the Canal Corporation has been doing work on the embankments between Middleport and a couple miles east of Albion and will be resurfacing the trail to fix where its been torn up by the heavy equipment. All in all a good thing, but not if you're trying to ride those sections... they even recommend some on-road detours (which may explain why it looked like the Cycle the Erie Canal markers at Knowlesville were coming toward the path from the road rather than from the Canalway Trail.)
So - not exactly a stellar start to what I had hoped would be my final year of chipping away at the Canalway Trail. But even a few miles is better than nothing, right? (And at least I rode for longer than the driving time to Albion and back...)
JMH
