Muskoka Lakes Loop

Granite, pine and water on both sides.

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Why this ride

148 km from Gravenhurst to Huntsville, about 2 h 51 of riding. It goes by way of Bala, Port Carling and Rosseau. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.

Roadbook

1. Gravenhurst start

   Gravenhurst is where the day begins.

2. Bala scenic

   Bala has two claims to fame, and both are good ones. In October it holds the Cranberry Festival, built around the bogs that surround the village, where the berries are harvested by flooding the beds so they float to the surface in a red carpet. And in the middle of the twentieth century it was one of the places in Ontario where you went to dance: the Kee to Bala, a lakeside hall, hosted big bands and then rock acts for generations, and a lot of grandparents in southern Ontario met each other there.

   The village sits where Lake Muskoka drains into the Moon River over a set of falls, in the granite country of the Canadian Shield. The rock is pink and grey, scrubbed by ice, and the lakes are dark, clear and cold. Lucy Maud Montgomery, who wrote Anne of Green Gables, visited Bala in the 1920s and drew on the district for her novel The Blue Castle, and there is a small museum in the village that makes much of it. The falls in the centre of town are a pleasant surprise for a place that seems built mostly for boats and cottages.

   The roads that bring you here, mostly the Muskoka district roads that thread between the lakes, are twisting, rolling and quite narrow. The bedrock forces the engineers to build around outcrops, which means a constant series of short rises and bends, with pine and birch pressing in on both sides. They are best on a weekday, because the cottage traffic arrives on Friday evening and leaves on Sunday afternoon, and then the lakes road becomes a slow line of trailers carrying boats. Watch for deer at dusk and for gravel washed onto the tarmac in spring.

   Bala is small enough that fuel is hit and miss in the off season, so plan to top up in Gravenhurst or Bracebridge, each about twenty-odd kilometres away, both of them real towns with all services. The village itself is good for ice cream, a sit-down lunch and a walk at the falls. Autumn colour comes in the first half of October, usually just in time for the festival, and the crowds follow it.

3. Port Carling scenic

   Port Carling exists because of a lock. In 1871 a short canal with a lock was cut through the narrows between Lake Rosseau and Lake Muskoka, joining the two lakes and opening up the whole chain for steamers that carried settlers, supplies and, later, summer visitors. A century and a half later the lock is still working, and from a bench beside it you can watch pleasure boats, some of them very expensive and very polished, rise and fall in the chamber while a small crowd stands by with ice cream.

   The village has been the centre of Muskoka boat building for as long as anyone remembers. The wooden launches and runabouts that were built here are collector's pieces now, and a good deal of the local economy still depends on cottage owners with a taste for varnish. The Muskoka Lakes Museum, near the lock, tells some of the story, and the old steamship RMS Segwun, launched in the 1880s and said to be the oldest operating steamship in North America, still sails from Gravenhurst, a reminder of what travel here looked like before the roads.

   By motorcycle, Port Carling is a calm, rolling landscape of low granite hills, lakes and white pines. The roads leading in and out follow the water, with plenty of blind curves, short climbs and sudden views across a lake or a bay, and the tarmac is mostly sound, with more potholes in spring. The pace is slow by necessity, since the speed limits are low and the shoulders are narrow; the countryside rewards a relaxed ride rather than an urgent one. On summer weekends the bridge and the main street fill with cars, so a morning visit gives you a quieter lock and an easier parking spot.

   For fuel, Bracebridge, about twenty-three kilometres away, is the nearest bigger place, with every kind of station, and Gravenhurst is a little further. The village has a few places for coffee, a bakery and a couple of pubs, but the options shrink after Labour Day. If you want somewhere to sit by the water, the park near the lock is the obvious place, and the grass is cooler than the road. In October, when the maples and birches turn, the whole district glows, and the cottages are mostly shut.

4. Rosseau scenic

   Rosseau is the quiet one of the three Muskoka stops. It lies at the northern end of Lake Rosseau, in a country of bare granite, black water and thin pine, and it is smaller, calmer and a good deal less manicured than Port Carling. In the nineteenth century this was a frontier: a colonisation road was pushed through the bush from Parry Sound on Georgian Bay, and the lake steamers met it here, so that settlers and goods could carry on by water into the heart of Muskoka. The land turned out to be far poorer for farming than the government had hoped, with soil that barely covered the rock, and a lot of the early farms failed, which is why the region turned to logging and then to tourism.

   That history explains the landscape. Many of the roads follow the old routes, and they have a purposeful, slightly crooked feel, with rock cuts, short steep pitches, one-lane bridges and frost-heave bumps. The rock cuts are a pleasure on a bike: pink and grey granite, scraped by glaciers, with birch roots clinging to the top. Traffic is lighter than around Bracebridge and Port Carling, though the weekend cottage flow still reaches here, and there are logging trucks and the occasional tractor. Deer are plentiful at dusk, and in autumn the sumac and red maple are brilliant against the dark conifers.

   The village has an old-fashioned centre with a small store, a few places to eat and a waterfront that looks across the bay. It feels like a place that has been a summer resort for more than a century, with old wooden lodges and cottages along the shore, but it has not been polished into a showpiece. A mooch along the water, a coffee and a slow ride out again is a good use of an hour.

   Fuel is the thing to plan. Rosseau itself is small, so do not rely on it; Parry Sound, about thirty kilometres to the west on Georgian Bay, is the nearest town of any size, and Huntsville is a similar distance to the north-east. Fill up at one of them before you come in. The lake is lovely in the evening, when the wind drops and the water goes flat, and the mosquitoes come out, so keep a jacket handy.

5. Huntsville finish

   Back at Huntsville. That is the ride.

Where this sits

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