The way points of this bicycle route:
If you recognise my bike route to work, you are indeed on the ball.
Selena had gone ahead of me, riding my bike with the trailer, as I had to go back for something we'd forgotten. There was some confusion as to what route she was supposed to take, and I ended up going straight here and checking out side streets along Dunvegan looking for her. But I record here Selena's route.
This was our first stop. And at this point I realized my camera was missing from my belt. I left Selena and the kids to play on the ladybug bus while i rode back home looking for the camera. Found it at home. Add about 13 km for me for that extra round trip.
St George/Beverly is probably one of the most bike friendly streets downtown. It goes through a big chunk of University of Toronto where bicycles abound.
Considered briefly cutting left through Grange Park, and it turns out that would have been a better way to go (probably down to Stephanie St to McCaul). But we wanted to see how things ended up with the bike lane. It ends abruptly, dumping you into massive traffic at Queen.
Now things get complicated.
Even the pedestrian traffic was so thick that walking the bikes looked so awkward that we decided to backtrack to side streets.
One of the reasons we came this way, besides not knowing another way, was we were perhaps going to meet up with my sister on Queen street. But that didn't work out. This part of our route is definitely not recommended.
This is actually an alley running behind the Queen St stores. It's a bit rough and smelly, but low traffic.
Walkway cuts over to University.
We stayed on the sidewalks along University for the sake of the trailer. Up in this area there was not much pedestrian traffic.
Pedestrian traffic starts to get thicker. Anticipating the awkwardness crossing the roads where University merges with York at Front St, we cut over to York, now walking the bikes most of the rest of the way down to Queen's Quay.
But, crossing the road here was still quite awkward. There are only a few crossing points for pedestrians, and a lot of car traffic coming together.
A regular single sidewalk goes along York under the train tracks. Despite the heavy pedestrian traffic, we walked along in front of the train station to Bay.
Bay St has a nice wide sidewalk which goes under the train tracks. In fact there is an area to the right (west) of the sidewalk which serves as a bike lane. We stayed walking on the side walk, but saw several bikes riding past us on our right.
Fairly heavy pedestrian traffic. Some sort of event (as usual) going to be taking place here.
Hearing drums thumping, and masses of people all around here, we finally figure out one reason traffic is so heavy: Dragon Boat races this weekend.
There is a bike lane on the south side of Queen's Quay here, but due to the Dragon Boat races the traffic was so heavy, with taxis and other vehicles stopped everywhere, we stuck to walking the north sidewalk.
Finally the traffic was clearing and we go to riding our bikes again on the south side of the street.
The large Queen's Quay Loblaws grocery store. We stopped here for lunch. They have a cafe-style area on the 3rd floor which looks out over the lake. It's quite nice, and not overly busy.
The bike lane continues along the street, however at this point a wide multi-use path branches off which is very nice especially for casual riding.
A sun-shower hit us along here. We stopped under a tree and broke out the snacks we'd got at the grocery store to keep the kids amused. In 5 minutes the rain was mostly over, and the ground under the tree was still dry.
Cherry St has several movable bridges. You have to ride on the road a lot of the time, but the traffic level is low.
Multi-use path along the east side of this street starting around Unwin Ave. We didn't cross over until this point.
Beach! Didn't know about this one before. It's a nice little area. There was a "chip wagon" parked here... but we'd just had lunch.
Very green, smooth riding along this path behind the marinas.
An obstacle. The bridge here has cement barriers blocking both ends. There is a narrow foot bridge open along the south side, but it was impossibly narrow for our double trailer. It's even narrow for riding a bike by itself unless you have very good balance to avoid scraping along the fences on both sides. (See note on other side of the bridge for the solution.)
The surface of a section of the middle of this bridge is missing. However a bunch of thick planks have been lain over the missing area, across the many iron cross-beams. It is quite possible to ride one's bike around the barrier and across the bridge. We had to lift out trailer over the shorter side barriers, and then walked it across easily, lifting it again across the barrier at the other end.
Signs say this is a private road. It is in fairly rough shape, seemingly servicing the gated entrance to a marina. The fences along the side of the road have small openings at the bottoms periodically to let animals through.
The entrance to the "Leslie St Spit" to the south. We'll have to check that out sometime. A hotdog cart had set up shop at this corner the way we went by.
This is still all multi-use path. No need to go on the roads here.
We were surprised how big this beach was. There are dozens of beach volleyball courts set up. We hung out here for a while making sand castles and checking out the play ground. There are a few restaurants, water fountains, and public bathrooms.
There is another mult-use path along the north side of Lake Shore Blvd. It's interesting because there is also a sidewalk, so there were no pedestrians on the multi-use path.
An interesting display of what look like the huge pillars which create the raised Gardner Expressway closer to downtown. However these pillars have no road on top. They do have pictures attached to them showing part of the Gardner Expressway being demolished. Did it once go out this far? We didn't stop to read the text.
An entrace to the Lower Don River pathway.
A fork. You can go west or north.
Pretty nice path, but of course fairly noisy from all the traffic on the Don Valley Parkway. The path also is a bit narrow in places, but fairly smooth.
A foot bridge crosses the Don River here, way up in the sky. There are stairs going up to it from the path. Lots and lots of stairs. Unfortunately pretty much impossible to get up there with the bike trailer. Selena was disappointed because Riverdale Farm (a favorite place of hers) is so close to the west, but unreachable from here with the trailer.
A bridge crosses to the east side of the river. There is no other choice.
Bloor St bridge is especially massive when viewed from beneath!
An old abandoned road forks off here. It looked okay for bike, and a possible way to get out of the valley. But the traffic in the distance looked very heavy and not at all bike friendly.
These bridges are really, really tall.
A little cement barrier zig-zag helps cyclists and pedestrians cross this road. The traffic is hard to see around the bends in each direction.
Asked a resting cyclist here about the trail north. Sounds good, but the next exit from the valley would take us some distance out of our way, as it curves to the east.
Small dirt parking lot, and a sign that says "Trail Closed". I couldn't really see any sign of a trail though. Maybe it'd been closed a long time...
Wide paved shoulders along both sides of this busy road. I saw several riders on fancy road bikes barrelling down in the southward direction. For us, however, it was the beginning of a lengthy and somewhat gruelling uphill climb.
Uphill, uphill, uphill. Still going up. The grade isn't very extreme, but it is a long haul. And hauling the heavily packed trailer gets to be a bit straining.
Entrance to another trail. Sign said it was temporarily closed.
The railway tracks beneath this bridge appeared long ago abandoned.
There is a brief slight downhill here... to get a run at the approaching, still continuing, uphill.
We weren't sure where we'd end up. But here we are! The grocery store was closed by this time (it was getting late), so we cut through the parking lot.
There are nice roads through the large Mount Pleasant Cemetery, but the gates are closed at night.
The cemetary gates were closed. We stayed on the sidewalk, as the cars parked along the road make it a bit hazardous for the trailer. And it was starting to get a bit dusky.
We went up to the north side of the cemetery, knowing that there is a way to get onto the Belt Line trail near its north-west corner.
There is a way to the path through this apartment building's driveway.
Foot/bike bridge across Yonge St and the subway tracks, and onto the Belt Line trail.
A bit annoying having to jog up to the street lights to get across these streets. But it is the safest way, depending on the traffic.
We're practically home!
Welcome to Bikely, take a step by step tour of this path:
Press Start Tour - then use the navigation buttons below to move along the path.
An excursion, pulling the kids in the trailer. Besides the horrific downtown part (we walked mostly on the sidewalks) there was amazingly little of the route on roads (from Queen's Quay onwards).
Tagged with: Recreational
