howie's Roubaix: 125Km Loop of Ottawa's Greenbelt

 https://www.strava.com/routes/2805180868908667112​​
Summary: 

• Approximate Distance: 125km
• Approximate Riding Time: 5.5 to 6 hours
• Area Covered: Centretown, Rockliffe, Ottawa River Pathway, Green's Creek/Hornet's Nest, Mer Bleue (west), Ramseyville-Albion Road Greenbelt Pathway, Sawmill Creek Pathway, South Keys/Sawmill Creek Pond System, McCarthy Woods, POW-Woodroffe Greenbelt Pathway, Pinhey Forest/Sportplex trails, Craig Henry bike path, Arlington Woods/Bruce Pit, Stoney Swamp, Wesley Clover, Accora Village, Frank Ryan/Elmhurst Park, Experimental Farm Pathway, Hartwell Locks, Carleton, Brewer Park.

You know you are in for an epic day when 24 guys come out for a 6-hour, 125km-long game of follow the leader and the last guy (Deki) shows up in a full Karate suit, including head gear, after riding to Old Ottawa South from Chelsea with a speaker strapped to his handlebar.

This route is obviously kind of a monster. We rode it in September 2020. It took a few months to finalize by stitching together multiple shorter rides. We also Google-mapped obsessively to identify possible ways to link segments together, followed by recon rides to connect the dots on the ground. 

I'm sure it's not the first attempt to circumnavigate the Greenbelt in Ottawa, but we really tried to pack as much off-road action in here as possible and to that extent I believe we have created something unique. 

​When I say we, it's because others had a hand in helping create this route, namely the Baron, Mike and Don. Many thanks to them for contributing their tips and insights.

Now that the credits are done rolling, we're going to break this down in some pretty decent detail so we can highlight how to get around this route, while also pointing out what I think are some of the more amusing aspects. Remember, at Howie's 3D Urban Exploro we promise novelty!

Highlights: 

• Start at Brighton Beach Park, Old Ottawa South
• North along Rideau River, mix of dirt/bike path/gravel path through to top of Strathcona Park
• Right on Charlotte, across Rideau and straight up to top of MacDonald Garden's Park. The Bandstand is the "Highest Point in Lowertown"
• Down the other side of the park avoiding the hidden wall (don't die here please!) and onto Cobourg
• Left on Saint Patrick, right on Forsey at the Chinese Embassy, then into Bordeleau Park
• Bordeleau Park (we stayed on the grass) to Union Bridge. Across the bridge and on Union to McKay Avenue
• McKay Avenue to Rockliffe Parkway, down the parkway to just past the second traffic circle
• Just after the second traffic circle get on the bike path and look for a Pagoda styled archway in the trees on the left- turn here through the archway
• Follow the path up a steep, short incline- look for roots and rocks. This is where Nephew of Saikaley (NOS) went blasting by me on a full suspension Cannondale Lefty
• At the top follow the pathway to the left (or right- it's a loop so doesn't really matter) and follow the pathway through the Pine Hill Woods down to Lisgar Road
• Follow Lisgar Rd North to the opening to Rockcliffe Road, which is a gravel road just past the US Ambassadors Residence- as we describe in the Segment: America Wants to Pave This, it's open at the top at Manor Road even though it says "No Exit" and "No Buses"
• From the top of Manor Road where Rockliffe Road terminates, you can wind your way to the Rockeries (24 people was a bit much for this, dog walkers= unimpressed) and then south on Acacia to Oakhill
• From the bottom of Oakhill Road we carefully crossed Beechwood and went up the hill into Beechwood Cemetery. As we noted in a previous ride that went through the Cemetery, cycling is allowed through here- we asked. Obviously you have to keep the noise and speed down and avoid any services in progress. Some people aren't comfortable with passing through- which is just fine, so feel free to route around this as needed
• From the exit of Beechwood head across to Meadow Park, across Hemlock Park onto Hemlock Road
• Turn right off Hemlock after the Aviation Parkway into the parking lot of the Demo home (circa 2020), into the road system that was once part of Rockliffe Airforce Base. There may be signage popping up around here regarding trespassing- we will update if/when we validate this
• Climb east through this area for about 500m or so on broken pavement, you eventually encounter a left hand turn that will lead you down a Segment called Col de Polaris, which is a steep drop onto the Eastern Parkway. There is a steel post sticking out of the ground on the right hand side you need to look out for. The braking on Frankenbike is noted to be terrifyingly bad, but regardless the surface is broken and the gravel loose, so best to control your speed.
• Once at the Parkway you can either take Marina Road to the River Pathway, or you can take a slight right onto a gravel trail. It's actually more like large aggregate which caused one sidewall blowout (Matei's Tufo Tubular) in our group. Anyway, whatever you choose head north to the river
• Head east on the gravel pathway until you turn up to cross over into the Green's Creek gravel pathway system that heads south up towards the Hornet's Nest
• Pass through the Hornet's Nest to Tauvette Street. 3/4 up Tauvette, turn right into the farmland there. Note: there may be signage asking you to not pass through depending on what's going on with the Covid situation, in order to protect people working on the community farm in the area
• If you look closely at the maps, or on Strava, you can navigate through the farm using the Segment: Conjugal Visit (may not be posted on Segments at time of writing, but is on Strava), which will take you from Tauvette to Innes where you pop out from behind a bus stop that is directly across from the Ottawa Detention Centre. It allows you to avoid the Blackburn Hamlet Bypass. 
• Hang a right and get on the bike path along Innes west for a couple hundred meters until the intersection of Anderson Road. Cross over to the other side of the street and ride down the sidewalk for another 200m heading west until you see a left hand turn that takes you into the trailhead for NCC trail #51 which is the start of the Segment: Secret Way. 
• Follow the Secret Way up into the farmers fields and across the rail trail, straight up a rise into the western end of Mer Bleue. This is only 1 kilometre but it's awesome and really leaves an impression. 
• From Mer Bleue head either right or left on the gravel utility road (left being the longer loop around) and exit where Walkley turns towards Ramseyville Road. Head straight up the hill at Ramseyville and follow the road for a couple of kms all the way under the 417 until you reach the trailhead for the Greenbelt Trail on Russell/Ramseyville. It's one of the only significant sections of road on the route, but it's pretty quiet and the surface is poor enough so that a gravel bike is a complement
• From here the route follows the Greenbelt Trails through Pine Grove all the way up to Albion Road. There are trail markers that help take you from Russell>Hawthorne>Davidson>Conroy>Bank>Albion. If you have never ridden these trails before, well, get yourself in there and be amazed. There's so much more on offer than what we cover here and in a word, it's wonderful. 
• We hid a case of water at the trailhead at Albion Road in a garbage bag. It's a long day so caching supplies is a good plan to consider if you have a group.
• So here's a twist, I think: from Albion head north, right onto Lester, left into Aladdin Lane. Go maybe 100m and look for an opening on the right onto a bike path. It's kind of on top of a speed bump if you need a landmark. So, turn right onto the bike path and immediately left to head north through a little park and then back east across Stedman St. and continue onto the pathway. Follow the path north-east for about 300-500m. Take it slow as a lot of people live around here, the path is a bit dark at the best of times and you need to keep an eye open for a sharp left that takes you down a deep dip and up onto a dirt path that runs between two rows of houses for about 200m. 
• At this point, once you hit Queensdale (first street you cross after the dirt path) you link up with the Sawmill Creek Pathway system. I won't go into anymore details on this other than to say you cross a lot of streets along the pathway system, hop a lot of curbs and after Albion you wind up passing the Duck Pond near Bridle Path at which point you want to aim for the path that ends atop a parking garage. Go up and over and down onto the street at the bottom.
• Head to Bridle Path and the intersection at Hunt Club. Cross at the lights and find your way down to the South Keys Transitway across the Cineplex parking lot. Pass through the tunnel (or whatever you call it) and out the other side and back into the Sawmill Creek Pathway System
• Head north on the pathway almost to Walkey. Just before the pathway arcs hard right towards the Transitway, there is a utility road on the left that takes you 20m to the Airport Parkway. Here you can very carefully cross the road, where you will see an opening to a hydro road. 
• Depending on the season there may or may not be a path immediately present. I suggest zooming in on Strava to see where we went, which is basically due west across a grass field which is part of Linton Park, towards the last house you can see at the edge of the hydro road. From there you can pick up a path that takes you left to the opposite tree line, where there is another utility road that heads west. This road can be really wet, and sometimes impassable. Plan B is to ride up the mowed grass under the hydro wires on the north side. 
• At the end of this section is McCarthy Road and just past the train tracks on the west side is the opening to McCarthy Woods. We cut southwest across the woods to Riverside. Again worth zooming in on Strava if you aren't familiar with the area. Lots of dirt trails throughout this area make it a nice destination. 
• From here we made our way to Kimberwick Crescent and took in the Kimberwick Climb. Immediately thereafter we split int two groups: Road bikes vs. CX/Gravel/MTB bikes.
• The road bikes (most had 28mm tires) went across the bridge at Hunt Club to the Met Parking lot.
• The adventure group went across Uplands-Riverside park to the most westerly corner where a hydro road runs southwest towards the river.  There's sort of a path here, but it's kind of rough and takes you sharply down to a pumping station at the bottom. Again NOS went flying by on this segment, demonstrating that on certain parts of this ride, a full suspension mountain bike is not overkill. I took it as slow as the crappy braking on Frankenbike would allow. At the bottom you pick up a 500m gravel road that rises very sharply and terminates back at Riverside at Hunt Club. The name of this segment on Strava is called Wild Turkeys on Meth, because during solo recon I came across a flock of wild turkeys, as well as a couple of guys parked in a car at the pumping station who appeared to smoking an illegal substance using a glass pipe. All that to say, I'm not recommending the segment, I'm just saying we did it and it's on the route if you download it. Novelty!
• From the meetup at the Met, we headed south on Prince of Wales to the Black's Rapids Lock Station, where on the right you turn onto another NCC Greenbelt trail that head's west following the very lovely Black's Rapids Creek across Merivale and then to Woodroffe. It's NCC property and the posted speed limit is 20kmph. Just saying. 
• You go north on Woodroffe on the bike path until Grenfell Crescent. Hopefully this is a useful piece of insight, but in 2020 I tried a few ways to find my way into the southern end of Pinhey Forest and I think this solution works well: Off of Grenfell go left onto Pratt until you can turn into Grenfell Park, head across to the baseball diamond and past third base you will see an entrance to the NCC property. Maybe 100m past the gate on the right is an entrance to the woods and once inside there is single track going everywhere. 
• We headed due north to Slack Road, where directly across the street is a massive sand dune I wanted to show people. Sand dune? If you haven't been to Pinhey Forest, there are multiple sand dunes in here. I'm eventually putting up a segment that will describe this in more detail, but suffice it to say it's pretty cool. See the photos. 
• We headed down Slack and re-entered the woods on the south side of Slack and followed a trail past another sand dune and eventually headed east before popping back out further down on Slack. Across Slack about 2/3 of the way to Merivale is a defunct school where we stopped for a snack. I hid a suitcase full of Pringles and Halloween Candy under a pile of shingles and debris the night before. We pulled that out, along with a case of water for an impromptu picnic. Pringles is basically astronaut food and heavy on salt, so great for a quick snack to both restore electrolytes and provide a shot of carbs. Add candy, water and boom! Rocket fuel. 
• Suitcase was put away and we entered a trail directly behind the school that leads into a downhill and onto a boardwalk that runs for a bit before you turn left onto a trail (31F) that takes you towards the Nepean Sportsplex. I'm sure that a lot of people have been through here on bike or foot so won't elaborate further. Once back at the Sportsplex, there is a path you can follow that takes you to a crosswalk at Hunt Club
• After crossing Hunt Club we took the path north to Benlea>Woodfield>Medhurst Drive which turns west towards Woodroffe where you can cross at the lights over to Knoxdale and onto the pathway system that starts at Craig Henry.
• From Craig Henry you can stay on that path heading west all the way to Greenbank. You could arguably break this part up a bit by throwing in some turns or finding a way to get back onto Craig Henry further down where there is a nice section of Hydro road that connects Craig Henry to Greenbank, but we had too many people to be getting onto neighbourhood side-streets and we already lost a few people at Benlea when they took a left on the path there instead of heading further north.
• From Greenbank you head over to the Trend Arlington bike path that eventually crosses McClellan road and then heads west to Arlington Woods and Bruce Pit area
• We took a left into the NCC trails at Arlington Woods and picked up #29 which took us to the Bruce Pit parking lot. We avoided the loop of Bruce Pit, mostly to make up time. It's a great gravel loop but we had lunch reservations we were going to be late for
• From Bruce Pit you can cross over top of the 416 on Bruin Lane and head towards Bell High School. Here there are bunch of trailheads for more NCC Greenbelt trails. We picked up trail 27 at the southernmost end of the baseball diamond. 
• Everything in here is apparently called trail 27 and during recon I got lost in here twice and a third time with the Baron. One thing to note is that in 2019 and 2020 they were rebuilding Hunt Club Road and the portion of the 27 that would normally cross over here was blocked by a serious looking wildlife fence. This means you have to find your way to Moodie, which requires a hard right heading back north before an eventual left to find the straight shot to Moodie. This is a popular area for Mountain Biking and there's lots of roots, rocks and moisture. We had at least one crash in here on the way through, so use caution and ride within your ability. Our man Ian who has solid MTB experience went blasting past me in here on his new Scott gravel bike looking very smooth, so skill is a factor in here for sure. Look at a map, follow the signposts, and/or bring a phone with a GPS. 
• From Moodie we skipped along the road and did not re-enter the eastern or western sections of Stony Swamp nearby- too many people in there and too narrow for 24 bikes. We went down to the Lime Kiln Trail which is wider and connects to Old Richmond. Our friend Parker hit a patch of mud on the Lime Kiln trail and absolutely hammered himself into the ground. The fact that he got up and finished the day earns him the hard-man award for this ride. Proof that you can crash anywhere. 
• Here we made what might be a tactical error. We (I) elected to ride down Old Richmond for 1.5km (or so) to the trailhead of NCC trail #24 on the West side of the road. I think we missed an important opportunity to take a less jarring route through Stonehaven. Once you find the #24 trailhead everything in here going in any direction is marked on the map as......trail #24! So which way do you go? After taking both options from the parking lot, what I can tell you is you need to be prepared to dismount regardless of whether you go straight or left. The goal of taking #24 is to eventually get to the Trans Canada Trail. We went left this time, and once we hit the trail it was like a scene from Saving Private Ryan with bodies and bikes flying all over the place in the mud. I went down on a slippery boardwalk and hammered my pedal into my calf. Others slipped on rocks and roots and went down. Donny's bike got a chain drop so severe Deki ended up having to take the bike 3/4 apart to get it loose. G-man broke his rear derailleur. Still some others like NOS, Deki and Big Rich rode over large portions of this in a demonstration of skill that has left me asking "how?". It was muddy and root infested, and as it turned out also mosquito infested which became apparent as Deki worked on Donny van der Beer's bike. With 24 guys all fired up trying to jam through this path it was a recipe for comedy. So after all that, was it a mistake? Actually, I'd do it again, for the laughs.
• Once we passed through the squirrelly part of the 24 and found our way to the Trans Canada Trail we headed over to Kichesippi and Walking Taco's for lunch. We called ahead (a week ahead) and made arrangements in advance with Michelle. Kichesippi gave us a safe space that followed the then current Covid guidelines and we enjoyed a solid taco salad and a beer. Michelle worked with the Kichesippi folks to provide amazing service for us- she even threw in extra Doritos with lunch! 
• After lunch we headed north on the bike path towards the Trans Canada Trail/Greenbelt Pathway that takes you past Wesley Clover. I forgot to turn on my Garmin, so that's the few K that is missing from this ride on the GPX you can download. 
• We intended to go all the way to Shirley's Bay, which the Baron and I did during recon, but we simply ran out of time with crashes and mechanicals. So we headed towards home instead. Shirley's Bay would add 5-7km to the route. 
• We connected with the Watts Creek Pathway heading east towards Moodie, crossed over and continued on the path until we passed Holly Acres. Once past Holly Acres we decided to switch it up a bit and took a right just past a bridge and into the Woodbridge Crescent area. We followed Woodbridge all the way until it crossed over Bayshore Drive and straight until it ends at the fence of the Cineplex. Another Cineplex you say? 
• Here you can pop up onto the grass and if you look along the fence line, there is a section missing you can pass through. How the hell did we find this? Perseverance! Anyway you can ride across the Cineplex parking lot, which was empty for us (Covid), and around to Carling.
• This whole scheme to get back home gets a bit silly at times and honestly a couple of people just stayed on the path along the river. Honestly it's whatever works for you. 
• Anyway back to the route which takes a right off Carling onto Roseview all the way to the end whereupon you come to a little pathway that goes straight up a ridiculously steep climb that averages 10% over 100m but I am convinced is 15% at the top. 
• That climb terminates at Richmond. Across Richmond you get onto Dumaurier Avenue and follow it all the way to Pinecrest. You could turn onto Grenon and find your way to the end of Dumaurier but cutting through Ruth Wildgen Park, but we missed the turn, which picked up the pace a little anyway. 
• From Pinecrest you cross over to Kelly Ave which turns into Neville Street and leads into Frank Ryan Park. From Frank Ryan Park you take the trails down (couple of options- gravel path or singletrack-ish) to Elmhurst Park at the end of which connects you to Elmhurst Street and the entrance back onto the Experimental Farm Pathway
• From the Experimental Farm Pathway we simply just followed it straight back to the Farm, crossing over Fisher and onto Cow Lane. We headed down Cow Lane basically straight across Prince of Wales, into the Fletcher Gardens, right through the trail by the pond and then through Ash Woodlot to the locks. We crossed the locks and cut straight through Carleton to Brewer Park, up Cameron, down Wendover to Linda Thom Park, under Billings Bridge and then along the Rideau back to Brighton Beach Park. 

.....And that is how you do 125km of mostly off-road riding around Ottawa. Whew. I need a beer.

This ride was part of a fundraising initiative for Rob Rishikof and the Ottawa Cancer Foundation's Cancer Coaching program. I think overall we brought in something like $1600 which was a fraction of Rob's fundraising for the year. We're still trying to help by selling Rishisocks.

I talk a lot about safety on this site and despite all of my planning it wasn't necessarily in the places that I considered most potentially dangerous that people crashed, so it's worth reminding you to ride safely and to understand the risks associated with riding in Cyclocross type conditions as we highlight on the MostlySafe page. 

Even though we were well spaced most of the time, we still had some touches of wheels that brought people down. Roots, rocks and mud were the other hazards that struck. We had eight crashes in total, by 7 people, so one unlucky guy went down twice. 

Different people rode different bikes:

• Road bikes;
• Commuter bikes;
• A vintage steel single speed with Tufo tubulars,
• Gravel bikes (some brand new- see photos!);
• CX bikes;
• A full suspension Lefty
• A vintage MTB
• A Greenbelt Bike: Frankenbike

Recap: We had Deki as on-bike DJ. We planned water and snacks. We had an awesome lunch and again, Walking Tacos and Kichesippi were amazing. We had beers at the end donated by the Baron, with Doritos donated by G-Man.

It was just a totally complete day that culminated in donations for our man Rish's charity. We missed a few friends that couldn't attend, but apart from that, it was perfect.

You may not get 24 people out, but I think this ride is likely to be most fun with others. After all it has been scientifically proven that men with friends live longer. I think that particular science likely also applies to women. We didn't find any women who wanted to put up with us this particular ride, but we do have female friends that enjoy Exploros, and we need them to keep our average for crashes down. Science!

​Anyway, we had a blast and if you try this with your friends, we hope you love it too!