June 23rd, 2019 / (129km/80mi, 770hm)
We started early at 6:30am with 129km to go today. Roads are pretty quiet this morning still – it’s a Sunday – and we finish the first 30km in a good time. This is when we reach the Northern Central Railroad Trail, that we follow for the next almost 70km thru the shade of the forest. It’s the former railroad track that has been turned into a walking and biking trail. The surface is light gravel, it’s a bit slippery, but overall no big deal and so we keep pedaling along, passing a lot of Sunday morning runners and bikers.
Except for a short stop this morning at a Dunkin Donuts to get some breakfast, we keep breaks short today. We’re both eager to get the miles covered and make it to Lancaster. By noon it has been getting hot again and we’ve been on the bike for a bit more than 5 hours already.
The remaining 30km from York to Lancaster are disappointing at best. We’re riding along the shoulder of the main street. Scenery is not nice, traffic is annoying, the tarmac is hot and we somehow have enough for today after 100km in the morning. At 3pm we reach our hotel, which is in a remodeled old factory (Cork Factory Hotel).