Kipling to Inglewood -97km Bike Rally Training Ride

In an effort to branch out with our rides without spending extra money on GO service we were tipped onto the Bike Rally website, which offers an awesome resource for maps of local routes that start and end at Toronto transit stations. Check some of them out here:

http://www.bikerally.org/Training-Ride-Maps/training-ride-maps.html

We took a scan through the routes and opted to do the Inglewood loop from Kipling station. While I am grateful for the compilation of maps and am sure that many of the routes are pleasant and scenic, this one was grossly misrepresented, promising “some of the best scenery you'll see on the training rides” –I certainly hope not. Unless you’re particularly fond of the sight of big box stores while riding along a secondary highway beside tractor trailers, I would suggest that there are much more enjoyable ways and places to cycle.

Although there was a little bit of ‘countryside’ riding at the northern tip of the route, this was for perhaps twenty kilometres and not worth the eighty kilometres of cycling through sprawl to get there. On our way back down to Kipling station there was a road block for an airport envoy that required a detour down Kipling Avenue from north of Eglinton down to the subway at Bloor; it was like riding on the moon it was so full of potholes!

We were pretty happy when we finally arrived at the subway. While we always any day we can spend on the bikes and we were glad to face a new challenge, we plan to leave this route behind us.