Tuesday September 22, 2015

A very cold morning this morning, only 5 degrees to start the day. It seemed warmer, but after only 15 minutes of riding we stopped and put on extra layers, my thumbs were so cold I thought they were going to fall off.  It did eventually warm up and we could shed some layers.

There was a very unusual ring around the sun this morning, it almost looked like a full circle rainbow.

A very hilly ride today we climbed over 1,100 metres, mostly on short sharp hills. There wasn’t supposed to be so many hills, but at one point google had us going on a gravel road, we opted not to take it. The alternate was to go into Alma, down a very long steep hill but only after we had climbed to a dizzying summit of 380 metres. Not a great height but our overall climbing at that point was 788 metres of elevation gained!

The downhill to Alma was definitely worth the reward of all that climbing.

We stopped in Alma for lunch – a lovely bakery that advertised themselves as “Home of the Sticky Bun” they looked really good, but I didn’t need the sugar rush.

There were two routes out of Alma, the coastal route and the less hilly route (Hwy 114). We opted for the less hilly route!

Riverside-Albert is a nice quiet village. There are some beautiful historic buildings but not a lot of services. Although there is a school where kids are transported in from the surrounding areas, including Alma.

We arrived at our warmshowers host house at 3:55 pm. Susan and John are transplants from Alberta. They kept us entertained during the evening with stories of “What you should know before moving to the East Coast”. They could write a very funny book.

They are planning their move possibly back to Alberta! They realized they made a mistake coming to rural New Brunswick – they are city folk. Ralf and I have discovered that about ourselves as well. We could never live out in the middle of nowhere.