Moncton, New Brunswick to Amherst, Nova Scotia

I am back on the bike this year, riding from Moncton to Halifax. 

At one time I had planned to have my cross-Canada bike trips finish in Halifax, but I have since decided to end in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, so this trip will not be my last leg. It will, however, take me to the Atlantic for the first time.

I flew to Halifax on Sunday, and yesterday I rented a bike at the Halifax harbour and caught the bus to Moncton. I had a brief scare at the bus station when the attendant who sold me the bike bag told me the bike might not be able to travel today, but the bus driver figured out how to fit it on and off we went. I got off at the Moncton airport, where I had finished my ride (with a flat tire) in 2019. From the airport, it was about six kilometres to my hotel in Dieppe, just outside of Moncton. 

This is my bike in the hotel lobby--you can see I Heart Bikes fitted me up pretty good!

Dieppe is a nice little place, apparently the largest French-majority city in Canada outside of Quebec. I stayed right on the city's main square. 

This morning I wheeled out of the hotel after breakfast and began heading south on route 106.

There is a lot of Acadian heritage in this part of New Brunswick.

I enjoyed cycling past poles painted with the Acadian flag, like this one in Memramcook.

I was trying to avoid the main highway as long as I could, and I was following the route Google recommended. This was mostly nice, but at some point it took me off down a gravel road, past the Dorchester Penitentiary firing range, and down a road that I later realized was supposed to be closed. I was too busy trying to navigate boulders and orange-mud puddles to photograph the "road," but it was a real adventure! 

Eventually I reached pavement and the town of Sackville, home of Mount Allison University. 

Now very close to the border with Nova Scotia, I gave up on the back routes here and joined Highway 2, which is divided, four lanes, and has a very good shoulder. I was traveling at a much higher average speed on here than I had been on some of the less-traveled roads!

Here I was leaving New Brunswick, which means I have now biked across: BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick!

Amherst is just across the border, and I arrived around 14:00. Today was only a 68 kilometre ride, but I was still plenty tired. 

Power was out around town, which made checking into the hotel interesting. For example, the key card did not work! It came back on eventually, so I headed over to the nearby laundromat, which was a bit of a blast from the past...

But, after a few quarters deposited laundry was done, and the rest of the afternoon and evening I was able to relax in Amherst.