By Joanne Steventon
For most people, the beautiful ocean vistas of Nova Scotia are best seen from the passenger seat of the family car with the wind blowing through their hair. This isn’t the case for local gym owner Tracy Beardsley.
“You can’t experience it any other way than being on your bike out there,” she said.
After cycling the province’s Cabot Trail for the first time eight years ago, she extended the invitation to the residents of Ottawa to join her.
For the past five years she’s been organizing a bike trip for mostly inexperienced, middle-aged riders around this 300-kilometre loop.
“I wanted to share the experience and the challenge of doing that type of ride with people,” she said. “As well, experience the beauty of Cape Breton and the beauty of its land, and the vastness. It’s just so peaceful out there.”
Training is set to begin at the end of March at Beardsley’s gym, TJFIT, for what she hails as the most difficult ride in Canada. During the four days of cycling, riders will encounter a number of large hills.
The easiest is called Mackenzie Mountain, which winds five kilometres up the peaceful Nova Scotia landscape.
A steep two-kilometre incline called Cape Smokey is the most difficult climb, Beardsley says.
In addition to these thigh-burning ascents, Beardsley says riders must also prepare themselves for the fickle east coast weather.
“You can get winds of 80 kilometres an hour,” she said. “And you can get any type of weather. You can get heat, you can get crazy wind, you can get cold, you can get rain.”
To conquer the challenging terrain, the trip actually begins on Ontario asphalt.
Beardsley recommends all participants take part in six organized training rides before tackling the Cabot Trail. The first training ride is at the end of March and will last for about two hours.
They will get progressively longer until her riders are cycling up to eight hours on their final training ride.
Beardsley says participants on the trip can expect to bike anywhere between five and seven hours a day, but days can last up to 11 hours with breaks and photo opportunities tossed in.
This sort of trip is what the Canadian Tourism Commission calls “Experiential Tourism.”
“It’s kind of a new trend where people don’t go to a specific location, they go for a specific experience,” said Guy Desaulniers, a communications advisor from the Canadian Tourism Commission.
Desaulniers says the CTC has noticed a movement in vacationers partaking in vacations that involve more stimulation and challenge, such as Beardsley’s long distance endurance bike trip.
Even though these trips involve a fair amount of grunt work, this doesn’t seem to make them less appealing.
“It was a personal challenge to meet some new people and so forth, and to have a good time really,” Victor Loewen said, explaining why he was first interested in the trip.
Loewen is a Centretown resident who has done Beardsley’s trip for the past three years. He says each year has brought a new motivation to get him through the long trek.
“The first year was emotional for me, the second year was fun, and the third year was the challenge,” he said.
Either way, Loewen says that every time he arrived at the final pit-stop, there was such a sense of accomplishment he wanted to turn around and do it again.
While Loewen has now branched off on his own personal bicycle excursions, Beardsley and this year’s crew will be hitting up the Cabot Trail July 3-8.
She says there are still spots available for those who are interested in taking up the challenge.