A Sunday bike ride

Another day of occasional summer showers today; we only needed to shelter once on our ride to the Hogs Back Falls. The trail from New Edinburgh follows the Rideau River all the way, only winding a short distance from it at the end to zigzag through a sloping field. We kept pedalling until we reached the outdoor "Cantina" at the Falls, now a Lone Star outlet, where we stopped for some lunch and took a look at the Falls, then turned around and pedalled back the way we'd come. We could have crossed the Hogs Back Road bridge and returned beside the Rideau Canal, except that would have meant riding amongst the holiday traffic in town for the last few kilometres.

The 25km ride was fun and good for us, no doubt, with small uphills here and there to increase the heart rate. We passed ducks, geese, rapids and innumerable picnic tables in the parks. Many other cyclists were doing the same. In the Vincent Massey park where a large party of people were enjoying a barbeque, we noticed a stone monument telling passers by about the Canadian Workers Mourning Day (my birthday, April 28th) "in recognition of all workers killed and injured on the job."

The Capital Pathway network in our city extends for 236 kilometres, apparently. The distance we covered today was the same as my husband's (one way) cycle ride to work from downtown Ottawa to Kanata. That route is mostly beside the Ottawa River and also almost entirely on the NCC's recreational trails.

Rushing water

Yesterday morning I caught a glimpse of the Hog's Back Falls as a friend drove me past it on the Colonel By Drive: a magnificent sight, the water rushing in full spate over the falls and drowning the islands in the stretch of river below, so that the bottoms of all their tree trunks are submerged.

Yesterday evening I saw the Rideau Falls in a similar state, the churned up river water the colour of dark ale as it surges over the lip of the falls. The hydroelectric station there is having some major alterations done, it seems, and the park's being re-landscaped, much of the area presently sealed off.

Construction work on the Minto Bridges, on the other hand, has now come to a halt, with renovations of the western most bridge apparently complete and the metalwork repainted, so the bridges are finally accessible to traffic and pedestrians again, only (!) 4 months behind schedule. Presumably they'll start work on the other two bridges later on.

Under the ice

Re. yesterday's post, "How do you know," says my husband, "that the water is rushing along under there where you can't see it?"

Rideau River at the Hog's Back Falls, January 2011

"You can tell from where it breaks through," I remind him, "at the waterfalls."

Actually there's not as much water in the rivers as normal, this winter. Precipitation levels have been low and if this trend continues there'll be the same worries next summer as in 2010.

The Hog's Back

On Monday I was in a car that took me all the way along Colonel By Drive; at the southern end of that ride I went past the Hog's Back Falls, at the point where the Rideau Canal splits from the Rideau River, and caught a glimpse of them from the passenger seat. I always want to stop to take a closer look at these falls; they're less well known by tourists than are the Rideau Falls, some 10km downstream, but much loved by the citizens of Ottawa. Today, having been at a house within walking distance of the Hog's Back I made a special detour to visit them instead of jumping straight on the bus back to town.

The Hog's Back Park near the Falls is being "rehabilitated; the parking area has been closed for the last few months and the buildings fenced off. The construction work was started at the end of last summer and has been abandoned for the winter, but all I had to do on foot was follow the trail of footprints, skirting the fences to the lookout points where I managed to take some photos: