Citroën Autoclub Canada – 2017 Fall Outing to Port Hope
by George Dyke…..
Back by popular demand from our first Fall outing to Port Hope in 2015, we once again made the trip just 100 kms east of Toronto to take in the magnificent salmon migration up the Ganaraska River. Our route was considerably longer because we took back-roads there all the way from our start location at the McDonalds restaurant on 16th Avenue in Richmond Hill just west of HWY 404. Gord Linkletter and his girlfriend Fannie, Sietse Elsinga, Elizabeth Matthews, Jeff Teerlinck, Herns and Ketty Pierre Jerome, Simon Walker, Prakash Raja, Jim Sciberas, Marijke Dyke and myself started out from there about 10:50 am after meeting for coffee and muffins at 10:00 am.
You can view a picture gallery of the outing here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsm7dwnD4
We headed north to near Port Perry, then over to Millbrook before dropping down to Port Hope about at 1:30 pm at the Port Hope Fish Ladder on Cavan St. just south of HWY 401 (the best place to see the salmon swimming and jumping up river). There we met up with eastern members Douglas Ogle and his friend Elizabeth from Brighton, Gary Magwood and his friend Bonnie from Belleville and Angus and Kaye McInnes from Verona. After checking the fish and getting checked out by a busload of Asian tourists that pulled up to marvel at the salmon but seemed equally fascinated by our Citroëns we took a short drive the main street of downtown Port Hope and had a delicious lunch at Trattoria Gusto, a charming restaurant in the 19th-century Waddell Hotel.
From Port Hope we took the country shoreline route along Lake Ontario back to Newcastle. Despite weather that looked a bit iffy we had a good turnout and dry weather, unless you took the rural way from Newcastle back to Toronto (which Jim Sciberas and Marijke, Elizabeth Matthews and I did in my ID19 because Jim was driving a 425 cc engine 2CV and we wanted to make sure he got back OK). That took two and a half hours with the last hour in pouring rain. Nevertheless we made we made it back safe and sound with the added bonus of the underside of our cars getting a thorough washing from the summer road dust that accumulated.
All in all it was truly a lovely day.