Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/566324
getaways 14 w e s t w o r l d | f a l l 2 0 1 5 w ith 10 kilometres still left to reach town, I realize I don't have sufficient calories left in me to keep the pedals spinning. We haven't meant to ride so far. But the sultry, still beauty of the late-summer prairie has lead us on like fools, past abandoned farmyards and ripening fields. Then there was the sidetrip to the Green Valley churchyard. The skimpy lunch I'd brought is long gone. If I could eat scenery, I'd be bursting. e canal is brimming with silver water, busy with fat ducks, the fragrant air a-hum with dragonflies. We pass a herd of cows in a muddy wallow that, in my glycogen-deprived delirium, remind me of happy Woodstock hippies. "You got a spare granola bar, Marki? I'm bonked." My longtime collaborator in outdoor wanderings, Mark Nicholson, has stopped to collect a deer skull and antlers he's found. Among his many qualifications as a trail buddy, Mark is a former Scout and never fails to summon needful things from his rucksack. But he's got nothing to eat either. "Yeah. I've been hungry for awhile," he says cheerfully. "Just have to make it to e Terrace." He's referring to the little steakhouse in Broderick – one of our fine discoveries from these canal rides – with its statue of Poseidon off the patio. It seems as remote as the Mediterranean. Mark finishes strapping the antlers to his bike, and we're off again on the gravel double-track. To dislodge the thought of french fries, I think back to the previous April and the process that lead Mark and I to invent the genteel sport of Saskatchewan canal riding. I guess you could say it began as a way of cheering Mark up. For backstory, you have to understand that Mark is one of those North Americans who simply cannot get enough of Europe. He lived Canal Riding Revival Turning an old pastime into Saskatchewan's newest sport by Allan Casey photography by Mark Nicholson and Allan Casey