Citroën Autoclub Canada – 2021 Fall Outing to the Durham and Northumberland Regions of Ontario

by George Dyke…..

It was a true Indian Summer day on October 3, 2021, for our Citroën Autoclub Canada annual fall outing. The weather was sunny and because of the warm temperatures we have had this year, we were just beginning to see the fall colours changing along the many tree-lined roads we traveled. As we have for the past two years, we ventured east of Toronto on the backroads of the Durham and Northumberland regions of Ontario.

You can view a picture gallery of the outing here.

We began the day in Richmond Hill meeting at McDonalds (1383 16th Ave.) just west of highway 404. We had some new Citroëns, (to club members at least), join us for the first time. Gerrard Punnet and Margret Fabry from Guelph arrived first in a newly imported 2006 Citroën C6. And Senen Racki, his dad an his daughter from Stoney Creek took their bright green SM out for it’s inaugural shake-down drive after a meticulous restoration that has taken them over a decade to complete.

As Ken McGuinness videoed our departure, we traveled north on Leslie St and east on Elgin Mills Rd to the end where we headed north to scoot around Stoufville and then go east into the Oak Ridges Moraine hills as we worked our way over toward Pontypool to meet up with Angus MacDougald who drove west in his SM from Verona (just north of Kingston).

Here is Ken’s video of us leaving McDonalds:

One thing we hadn’t planned on was a road closure of Highway 115/35 between the 401 and 35, which caused Angus to be delayed and for us to be stuck in a traffic jam as we went along Concession Rd 20 trying to rendezvous with him. Eventually, we able to move back onto some marvelous country roads (like Zion Line) and Angus caught up to us in the town of Bewdley on Rice Lake, where we stopped to relax for 45 minutes.

From Bewdley we traveled along the picturesque Cavan Rd for a few kilometers and then headed north to Gore’s Landing where once again we were on the shore of Rice Lake, taking the Rice Lake Scenic Rd east to Lilac Road to join Hwy 9 then east to MacDonald Rd and down through Peter’s Woods Provincial Nature Reserve. As we got close to Hwy 401, we made an obscure right onto Boomerang Rd, that put us onto a series of small roads meandering through the rolling hills just north of the 401, eventually crossing over it and taking us along a marvelous country route into Coburg.

Once in Coburg, it was only a short jaunt along Hwy 2 to get to Port Hope where we stopped for dinner at Turtle John’s Pub.

Afterward, a few folks went up the street to the Port Hope Fish Ladder to view in the twilight the massive number of salmon and lake trout migrating up the Ganaraska River to spawn.

All in all — it was great day and wonderful to see so many members back on the road again in their Citroëns as we are still coping with the Covid pandemic.