A little piece of paradise

It seems like quite a lot has happened since my last blog...the highlights of which haven't been on the bike! I thought Summerside where we first started was pretty but it doesn't really compare to the green, hilly interior and north coast of the island. Our first stage of the tour was harder than expected on a relatively flat circuit around Summerside. The sun was shining but the wind was blowing and lots of girls were struggling in the cross-winds which meant the bunch was strung out a lot.
The next day was a very interesting stage, an individual time trial of 28.8 km across Confederation Bridge, the bridge that joins New Brunswick (on the mainland) with PEI. Again the wind was blowing very strongly which meant 60kph+ on the way out, spinning out in the 12 cog and then a very slow grovel home of 22-26kph...crazy! All just on one road...no corners to ease the wind in our faces.
We then moved hotels to the north coast, we were staying in cottages on a lake, fireplaces in all of them and my highlight was a beautiful golden retriever named Sam who lived there. It was a gorgeous place and we felt very lucky indeed to stay there. The race on the third day was pretty nasty, again a lot of wind and after my tummy bug I haven't regained the strength I would have liked. I am lacking any power to have a real go and was hanging on for dear life. We started and finished in the village of Cavendish which is home to 'Green Gables', we took some photos and I explained the stories of Anne of Green Gables to the Germans who had never heard of it.
After much overnight contemplation on whether to start today, I had some feedback from the heart rate data that I take in the mornings that my body was coping okay, despite feeling terrible and so I started. Luckily it was a slower race at the start and I was able to ride myself into it a little bit. We raced from the north coast, eastwards and then looped to the south-west and we finished in Stratford, just across the bridge from Charlottetown, the capital of PEI. We are now staying in uni dorms in Charlottetown which are the flashest that I have seen. Tomorrow is the last day of the tour with a crit in the afternoon in downtown Charlottetown...its been a pretty tough 10 days of racing with some sickness and lots of travel thrown in. It has been great to see a different part of the world, but I am looking forward to going home :)
The first photo has Confederation Bridge in the background, the one that we time trialled across. The next photo is me at Green Gables, the next at one of our hotels called Shaw's which has been a hotel since the 1860's and the final one is of the team at Brackely Beach on the north coast.