The route to Belwood can be cut off at Fergus, or Elora, or West Montrose. The second time you get to Conestogo, you have an option to wimp out and come back the back road to Lexington/Columbia again. You can leave out the trip to Elmira. You *CAN* ride straight back from St. Jacob's along King Street and then Weber, but that road is usually unpleasantly busy. After St. Jacob's you can shorten the route by going through Heidelberg. And, of course, one can skip the Elora/Belwood leg of the route, and head straight from Conestogo to St. Jacobs. So all sorts of different length rides are possible. There are no real climbs, except for the short extremely steep stretch outside Hawkesville.

Hmm, at places it really does offer a few too many choices. Perhaps after extensive re-editing, it will become a really useful set of cues for someone unfamiliar with the area.

Oh well, here it is:

0 km
START: The Columbia entrance to the University.

Follow Columbia/Lexington east to T-intersection.

4 km
LEFT at T-intersection, follow road to Conestogo.

9 km
RIGHT at top of hill in Conestogo.

12 km
hard LEFT onto Winterbourne Road which leads to Elora

19 km
STOP SIGN for old highway 86 just past the West Montrose river side road; STRAIGHT THROUGH
25 km
Pass straight through Inverhaugh.

Continue straight on the same road even after it enters
30 km
Elora; you should encounter a set of traffic lights, and then a stop-sign, but continue straight.
31 km
Road ends at a T-intersection, turn LEFT

Go down a short hill to a STOP SIGN, and turn right.

Follow this south river road all the way into Fergus, and follow it straight through a set of traffic lights and a stop sign until it ends in another T-intersection.

37 km
Turn LEFT at T-intersection, and soon thereafter, just before the bridge and the hill, make a sharp RIGHT onto a road clearly marked as "Old Orangeville Road". Follow that (bumpy) road until it takes you to the new Orangeville Road.

An optional scenic route adds 12km, but causes you to spend less time on the relatively busy Orangeville Road. This makes this portion of the route more pleasant. Also, it makes the later Elmira "side-trip" optional, while still leaving a 162km route.

Go to [*] to skip this scenic route.

Turn LEFT onto the Orangeville Road, and take the next paved RIGHT.

36 km
You go up a small hill immediately after turning the corner.

38 km
Take the first paved LEFT, about 2 km later.

Warning this is rough pavement. Not hacked up smooth asphalt, but durable rough pavement. Users of 19c tyres may wish they had nice fat 23c tyres like mine. Or larger.

~43 km
Turn RIGHT at the first fully smoothly-paved, non-staggered intersection.

Follow this road to Oustic. Note the signs to drive slowly.

~49 km
At FOUR-WAY-STOP in Oustic, turn LEFT (up a hill).

Continue northeast until a stop sign at the seventh line (beyond which the pavement completely disintegrates, anyway)

~53 km
Turn LEFT at STOP-SIGN.

60 km
Stop sign at Orangeville Road marked with a flashing red light. Continue straight and follow the road into Belwood.

Warning: While this scenic detour to Oustic does reduce traffic going to Belwood, the Garafraxa Road return route into Fergus does get relatively busy, including campers and trailers. So it is best to plan to get to Belwood relatively early, and you may even decide it is better therefore to take the shorter smoother route anyway.

Rejoin other route in Belwood

[*]Turn LEFT onto the Orangeville Road. Follow this northeast to the seventh line, which is paved and marked with a flashing amber light

48 km
Turn LEFT at the flashing amber light and follow the road into Belwood.

[There are snacks in Belwood; there is a decent restaurant and take-out by a park on the road if you turn left just before the top of the hill].

51 km
T-intersection at the top of the hill past the bridge, turn LEFT

Follow this road all the way back to Fergus.

It becomes Garafraxa Road.

Follow it (past a set of lights) until it ends at a T-intersection.

[Actually, now I tend to arrange follow a quieter road, Hill Street, one to the left, through Fergus, going out to Garafraxa when Hill Street ends]

64 km
Garafraxa Road ends in T-intersection. Turn RIGHT,

and take the next paved LEFT, and follow it into
70 km
Elora.

You may want to try and look for snacks in Elora.

Find David Street leading out of Elora, perpendicular to the main street, Geddes, and parallel to the way you arrived, a couple of streets to the northwest.

My old route is to follow David Street all the way to West Montrose. I have a new variation, however, which takes you to Floradale, and avoids the heavily trafficked stretch around Conestogo. Send me e-mail and I'll tell you about it, and might get around to adding it in here a yet another variation.

Anyway, following David Street all the way to West Montrose involves a stop-sign, a four-way stop-sign, passing Randall's house which will be on the left, passing a little brick castle turret at the top of a rise which will be on the right, passing a new order Mennonite church which will be on the left, and another stop sign (old Hwy 86), until you come to the stop sign in West Montrose.

82 km
At stop sign in West Montrose, turn RIGHT, climb a rise, and follow the curvy paved road out to a T intersection.

83 km
Road ends in a T intersection with a major road. Turn LEFT, and follow the road back to Conestogo.

89 km
Stop sign in Conestogo, turn RIGHT.

[Click here to skip optional Elmira side-trip]

Look for the first paved road on the right.

This is the second right turn; the correct road is paved if you turn right, but not if you were to turn left.

94 km
Turn RIGHT

and follow this into

100 km
Elmira.

Just before the Stop Sign at Hwy 86, you can turn onto a parallel access road marked at "Industrial Road". There is a McDonald's and a Donut Shop along here. Once you've passed the McDonald's, you can turn around and follow the road all the way back to where you picked it up.

That is, from McDonald's, follow Industrial Road to Stop Sign.

Turn LEFT. Follow pavement (it makes a couple of turns) until you get to an intersection beyond which the pavement ends.

106km
Turn RIGHT, resuming the route you would have taken were it not for the Elmira diversion.

[end optional Elmira side-trip]

Traffic lights for Hwy 86 just outside St. Jacob's.

Hope some helpful car trips them for you.

Follow the road across Hwy 86, straight through the next intersection to a T-intersection. This is avoiding the main St. Jacob's business district. You may rather want to go visit and/or look for snacks.

NB. On Sundays there is very little between St. Jacob's and Bamberg for snacks--about 40km, and it feels like even more at that point in the ride.

At the T-intersection turn LEFT,

and take the next RIGHT.

This is fairly clearly marked as Hawkesville Road.

Follow this not quite to the end, but until it is obviously going to end up on a private gravel pit.

Turn RIGHT at this effective T-intersection.

Follow the road left up the hill and past Hawkesville, and continue on the same road until you arrive in

125 km
Linwood. Turn LEFT at the main intersection (just before the tavern; there is a little country store right there too. It is pretty good for snacks (but not on Sundays)).

Continue until the pavement ends.

Turn LEFT. There are signs pointing you to Cross Hill and Wellesley.

Cross Hill. The road appears to curve, but is also an intersection. Follow the RIGHT curve, but not the next LEFT.

Immediately after a big brown sign announcing Wellesley, there is a little green arrow sign saying "Wellesley" pointing left down a road.

Turn LEFT to follow that sign.

And soon you will arrive in

140 km
Wellesley. Follow the road straight through Wellesley, and turn right when it Ts out, and turn left when that Ts out.

The road you end up on heads toward Bamberg, but a bit south of it. It also curves around, and would take you to St. Agatha, but you don't want to follow it that far.

So, after finding this road near Wellesley, head east (basically) along it until you come to an three-way stop sign. This is just past a mailbox being held up by a bear silhouette.

Turn LEFT.

After arriving in Bamberg, turn RIGHT.

Follow the road to the end, turn LEFT, then RIGHT.

Unless you need another hill. 8-)

After the longish downhill curve, turn left at the flashing light in Erbsville onto the Conservation Drive.

Four-way STOP. Straight through.

Follow Conservation Drive to Northlake Drive.

Turn RIGHT.

Take next useful RIGHT (onto High Point Road), and cross Northfield Drive at the stop sign.

After Northfield Drive, take the first LEFT. (Rolling Hills).

Then the next RIGHT. (FallingBrook)

Follow Fallingbrook out to Glen Forest (stop sign, non residential suburban street), turn RIGHT, and follow that to Bearinger Road.

Turn LEFT onto Bearinger.

You probably want to find your way home from somewhere around this point, but to complete the route, I go straight along Bearinger, straight through the traffic lights, follow the road RIGHT, and it becomes Hazel Street, although you may want to take Philip Street back to the University.

I have measured total distance at about 162km for this course.


As you take Garafraxa Road down into Fergus. there is actually a rough paved road which hooks around into town, just as you approach the town limits. This avoids a particularly hairy stretch of Garafraxa Road where I guess they can't decide who should pay for it, and it gets narrow and bumpy at the same time just before it widens out into a residential street. Besides, taking the detour allows you to climb that nice little hill in Fergus just after the bridge on Scotland Street/Gartshore Road. You then go up and meet Garafraxa Road again. This detour is difficult to find the first time unless your map-reading skills and sense of location are very good.