Purce-hell

Laurie and I were supposed to ride the Potomac Pedalers Backroads Century in West Virginia this past weekend but it was canceled because of Hurricane Florence, which was threatening the mid-Atlantic. I don't know if Shepherdstown had bad weather in the end, but Sunday in VA was actually sunny--a rare event these days.

Rain canceled our planned ride in Ashtabula, OH in July (hoping to try again on that one in October), and has impeded my riding schedule (in addition to the trip to Alaska) in the last month I've been struggling, and often failing, to get my 60 miles in each week.

So Laurie and I planned a ride in Purceville to make up for the canceled Backroads Century. We planned to use the cue sheet from a WWO ride she did earlier in the summer. Then I had a bad IBS attack Saturday night. I should definitely have stayed home, but I couldn't stand the idea of canceling because that seems to be all we do lately with our bike rides - cancel them. So I went to Purceville anyway. Which was a little stupid. Laurie, for her part, woke at 5am and couldnt' get back to sleep. She'd had a stressful week and needed that sleep. Plus she hadn't ridden in two weeks. So we were not feeling 100%.

We met at Bicycles and Coffee in Purceville.

We are sad to start off feeling under the weather on a day when we finally have nice weather to ride!

The ride starts out for 4 miles on the W&OD, a nice flat, shaded spot to get warmed up. The bumps in the trail were jarring to my sore gut, however, so I was ready to hit the smoother road.

The W&OD

We entered the town of Waterford, which is quite lovely. It was founded in 1733 by Amos Janney, a Quaker from PA who built a mill on the Catoctin Creek and called the place Janney's Mill. The name changed to Waterford in the 1780s. After we got done with it, Laurie and I were ready to rename it the Bermuda Triangle. We could not find our way out of that place!

Laurie rides ahead through town.

Looking down this hill reminded me of the villages in France.

I thought this was so funny, a door on the 2nd story leading nowhere.

This is Laurie leading the way on our first pass by this house. We'd go by at least one more time as we circled around trying to figure out the cue sheet and wondering if this was where the "one missing turn" we'd heard about was located.

I just love old cabins like this because they remind me of our vacations in Canada.

Eventually, we escaped Waterford and set out into the country side. Most of the ride was relatively flat, so there were no spectacular overlooks or anything, just rolling fields dotted with round hay bales.

We knew we'd entered Taylorstown because there was a sign and an out-of-business general store. It's sad to see these places close up.

We stopped on Lovettsville road to eat our snacks. Dry saltine crackers for me. A luscious looking PB&J with banana for Laurie--but this was the first thing she'd eaten all day. I hadn't eaten anything but a few of these crackers, so I knew my energy was going to drop out at some point.

See Mr. Cow looking at me from under the tree? How now brown cow?

After our stop, we came to Lovettsville. By now, we are both hurting. The lack of rest, lack of nutrition, and my illness (I would discover I had a fever when we got home), were all taking their toll. I didn't take any pictures of Lovettsville but should have. What a weird little place. It looked like someone decided to start a town and dropped 5 or 6 pre-fab neighborhoods into the middle of nowhere then threw in a gas station (with a nice bathroom, btw), and a few other retail outlets. It looked like the suburbs in the country. Completely devoid of personality.

So, I just looked it up. It was settled by Germans in 1836, so I guess there is an historic downtown somewhere, our cue sheet just didn't take us through it.

By now we are at mile 24 and we're ready for home. Then we finally came upon the missing turn. Thankfully, this didn't take us out of our way. We realized it was missing immediately and had to stop twice to look at the map. Not too bad.

Then we were back on the W&OD! Almost there!

Here's the image of the whole ride. I'm surprised to see Lovettsville looking like it's right in the middle. It felt like it took us forever to get there.

And here's part of the reason why. We went in circles in Waterford, tried one way out, realized it was wrong, doubled back and did another circle through the town and finally headed out the right way!

In the end, we rode 39 miles (should have been 36). At 13.2 mph. Slow but not too bad for two miserable old ladies who didn't feel well! :)

I came home, showered, and went to bed. Didn't get up until 7:30 pm!