Preparing for Cycle Touring with Kids

Cycle Touring with Kids is a blast. It’s fun, it’s challenging, and it changes your perspective on family travel.

If you’ve been following this blog a while, you know we’ve recently come back from a 9-month RV adventure with our three kids, now ages 9, 7, and 5.  But this wasn’t our first family adventure. When the kids were 6, 4, and 2, we took off for a 567-kilometer cycle adventure from Kingston, Ontario, to London, Ontario, where my parents and brother & family live.

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10 Essentials for Travelling with Children

If you’ve been following this blog a while, you know that our family loves to travel. Whether it’s hopping on a bicycle for an adventure, or travelling all over Canada and the US in an RV, I know I’m happiest when I’m discovering the world with my husband and children.

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Cycle Touring with Kids – Our Gear, Part 2

So eons ago, I had promised I’d write a post about what we carried with us on our cycle tour. I did talk about our gear, as well as the camping stuff we brought along, but I never did write that post about what exactly was in those saddle bags. Well, better late than never, I say!

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We made it to London! And I finally caught up on these posts!

After a restful sleep on a real bed in Woodstock, we headed out to our final destination. We hit a bit of rain, but it was light enough not to be bothersome.

We noticed that we passed the part of  Woodstock that had some restaurants, but it wasn’t even 11:00 a.m. yet, so we decided to keep pedalling. We were out of food at this point, so that may have been an unwise decision. At the same time, it opened the door for one of the amazing experiences of this trip.

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Snacks under the Weeping Willow

We enjoyed our ride from Brantford to Woodstock.

On the way, we stopped at a farm and asked the young guy who was working on the yard if we could stop and eat lunch on his front lawn. He said yes, and we were able to enjoy a nice meal under a gorgeous weeping willow—that’s my favourite tree, so this was really nice. We were able to use the facilities as well, which was great.

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Rail Trails Are Great Fun!

After our lovely time in Hamilton, we headed out to Brantford via the Hamilton-Brantford Rail-Trail.

It was a gorgeous trail, and we got to see some horses during a portion of it. The kids also made friends with a  little caterpillar that hung out on daddy’s vest for a while, then on K-girl’s arm.

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Best doughnuts ever and great warm shower hosts

In Hamilton, we stayed with a  lovely family who has lots of experience cycle touring. They are the Pedal Powered Family, and they’re always ready to receive visitors. It was so wonderful to experience such amazing generosity, and I learned a wonderful lesson during my time with this family.

They have two children, and our kids were ecstatic to have playmates again. They also had a pretty cool tree-house bed that the kids got to sleep in.

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A cool bridge and Bike Butik

After a relaxing time of recovery in Toronto, we headed out to Mississauga. We got to see some nice things in Toronto, including the wavy boardwalk I mentioned in another blog post, as well as this cool bridge. I love bridges, and methinks perhaps one day I’ll do a bridge-themed trip, where I get to go see all the cool bridges all over the world…. Mmm another item for my bucket list.

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Toronto Fun

After a relaxing time at Uncle Neil and Aunt Cindy’s house, we headed out to Toronto. Because we had decided to sleep in downtown Toronto, it wasn’t possible to get a host there—at least not one capable of accommodating a family of 5 cycle tourists carrying a bunch of gear. So I bid on a hotel in downtown Toronto, as  I usually do when I need to stay at hotels. I usually use Priceline for this. We got a pretty nice hotel with a  pool and a little kitchenette, which was awesome. I unwittingly booked it in pride village, so Katia was pretty happy, since she was really into rainbows this summer.

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Thunderstorms and Kind Souls

I spent some time this past week writing down everything (or most things) I could remember from our cycling trip this spring. Get ready for an onslaught of posts from what seems like an event a lifetime ago (but it’s really been only 7 months. Better late than never with the posts, I guess.)

It seems a bit ridiculous that I’m writing blog posts about a trip we took last summer, and it’s the end of January. But I really want to share our awesome experience, and I figure it’s better late than never.

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