48 Hours Grand Manan Island, N. B.

Riding the quiet trails of Grand Manan Island

Our first compliment

comes minutes after setting off. We’re cycling uphill on a coastal trail that begins next to a lighthouse and a dusty makeshift helipad on the breathtakingly rugged western coast of Grand Manan Island. A woman heading in the opposite direction shouts, “Hey, nice cycling outfit!”

Kurt Gumushel looks back at me, grins, and makes sure I’ll remember how to describe him later: “Smoothie has two O’s,” he says. So here it is: Gumushel is indeed charming and dashing, with George Clooney-esque good looks. This can’t be hurting Off Kilter Biking Tours, his cycle touring company, which is now doing business in its fifth tourist season in southwestern coastal New Brunswick. Yet it’s the company’s gimmick that catches most of the attention: when you sign up to ride with Off Kilter, you sign up to ride in a kilt.

“People like the sound of mountain biking in a kilt. It sounds dangerous,” Gumushel beams.

The kilts are for sheer cheek value, as it were. Gumushel’s father, a retired master kilt maker in town, designed them to his cycling son’s specifications. They’re comfortable, and riders concerned about their modesty should note that they’re typically worn overtop cycling shorts.

Also specially tailored are the itineraries. Off Kilter can cater to any skill and fitness level, thanks to the multitude of trails in the vicinity of its home base of the seaside resort town of Saint Andrews. Options range from a low-impact two-hour jaunt along the gentle, relatively flat trails around Saint Andrews to

“With no one around to poke fun at you, you can even forget for a minute that you're wearing a kilt.”

a challenging full- day excursion to Grand Manan Island. “The real money shows are up in the forest,” explains Gumushel's former partner, Geoff Slater. “The diversity of this area, with its islands and rivers and lakes and the ocean, and the tides – just to be able to ride on the ocean floor at low tide to get to islands, it’s so unique.”

New Brunswick’s richness in forest, lake and ocean is especially evident on Grand Manan, a 34-km-long island in the Bay of Fundy that forms the shape of an arrowhead and overlooks the coast of Maine on a clear day. To hike around the island would take a couple of days and there are many places a car can’t go. A bicycle is the ideal vehicle for taking it in. I’ve chosen a three-hour-ish ride on the rocky western part of the island, far from the still-active

fishing villages that hug the opposite shore. “It’s almost undiscovered. You’re riding where there’s no one else riding. You could go all day without seeing anyone. It’s kind of like backcountry riding, except you’re atop these cliffs,” Gumushel says.

There is a price to be paid for all that beauty: first we must grab an early-morning ferry at Blacks Harbour to make the 90-minute journey to Grand Manan. Once there, a van brings us to the head of the trail we plan to tackle. It’s an old life-saving trail, which was carved out of the bush so that shipwrecked sailors could be hauled from the rocky north and west side of Grand Manan to medical care on the other end. The mostly singletrack trail is difficult in places; it may have riders dismounting and carrying their rigs in certain spots. The first 30 to 40 minutes is an especially challenging incline. “It’s actually more of a hiking trail that we’re riding. It’s rocky and rooty and tough riding – technical, I’d say. There’s ups and downs, switchbacks and brooks – the best of East Coast biking,” Gumushel says.

Within about 40 minutes, our bikes have already taken us beyond where foot-based civilization normally treads. We take a break to peer all the way down at the hikers on a ledge tens of metres below us and several hundred metres behind. “They’ve been hiking all day, since morning,” says Gumushel, who invites me to join him in a little chuckle at their expense.

Off Kilter outfits its clients with 29ers to help get over the hard scrabble. “I’m riding a Rocky Mountain 29er, the Sol,” Gumushel says. “They’re really the best bikes for those difficult trails, I find. Because of the rocks and roots you get that extra clearance.”

And if you’re afraid of heights, don’t look down: sections of the trail cleave closely to ruggedly sheer cliffs. There are, meanwhile, gentler stretches in meadow-like clearings along the way, some with vistas over the Bay of Fundy that tempt a rider to hop off and meditate on the view. One clearing is actually the backyard of someone’s backwoods cabin. “It gets to those points where it opens up and you see bald eagles and whales and you don’t see anybody. It’s beautiful,” Gumushel says. With no one around to poke fun at you, you can even forget for a minute that you’re wearing a kilt.

The last half-hour of the standard ride is a mercifully gentle coast along paved highway back to the van. For experienced riders, Grand Manan offers at least another half- day of riding, making a full- day epic possible. (Note that an overnight stay at one of the island’s inns may be necessary due to the ferry schedule.)

“There’s not too many people who could do that epic,” Gumushel cautions. “It’s a full- day ride and not for the faint of heart.”

I stick to the half-day, and sleep most of the way back on the ferry to the mainland, missing a show of splashing finback whales.

After the nap, I’m ready to take on a softer side of southwestern New Brunswick cycling, a relatively leisurely ride along the loping trails that ring Saint Andrews. Another option (not exercised by this rider) is to visit Ministers Island and gawk at the former mansion of 19th-century Canadian Pacific Railway boss Sir William Van Horne.

When it comes to New Brunswick in general, Slater says, “The opportunities for taking people off-road are endless

38

here. Even just with the rail beds and atv trails, not to mention the singletrack. You see something that looks like a trail, you just bike it to see where it goes. I’ve probably biked every trail within 100 km of Saint Andrews.” And where trails don’t yet connect, volunteers have worked to create linkages in recent years, often by converting disused rail beds. “People start helping and it just kind of grows.”

“The bike culture seems to be exploding around here, which is good,” Gumushel concurs. A fledgling Facebook group for Grand Manan mountain bikers, for example, has about 20 members.

As lovely as the grassy meadows and rail beds around Saint Andrews may be, “Grand Manan is a special place,” Gumushel says. “That’s where you ride the epic.”

And somehow it’s even more epic when you’re wearing a skirt.

Details

How to get there Saint Andrews is about 100 km west of Saint John, N. B. The ferry to Grand Manan (see schedule at

coastaltransport.ca) leaves from Blacks Harbour, about two-thirds of the way to Saint Andrews from Saint John.

Where to stay Reopening for summer 2013 after taking a season off for renovations, the Algonquin Resort (

algonquinresort.ca) is a 19th- century grand old lady in the Tudor style, and offers a golf course and family programs. The Kingsbrae Arms (

kingsbrae.com) is a more boutique option in a Victorian mansion.

Where to eat On the highway between Saint Andrews and Blacks Harbour, Oven Head Salmon Smokers (

ovenheadsmokers.

com)

offers tasty salmon jerky, pâté and other products from a small shop. The lox is sublime.