Cycling the Thousand Islands Parkway from Gananoque

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As we turn on to the Thousand Islands Parkway from Gananoque, ON, we notice two police cars with their lights flashing. One of the cops is walking in the grass. As we get closer, we noticed he has a road bike in his hands, mangled. Was it a collision, or did a bike just fall off a car?

There is a nice wide multi use pathway next to the road, separated by a strip of grass. If it was a collision, did the cyclist take the onramp, planning to cross the Parkway later and joining the pathway on the northside, instead of the more cumbersome access to the start of the pathway?

Mmm, not a good start of a day of biking on the 1000 Islands Parkway for us.

two cyclists are about to cross a new bridge across a small waterbody slong the Thousand Islands Parkway

We cycled bits and pieces of the Waterfront Trail in Ontario before, but as we have so much bike touring options in the Ottawa-Gatineau region, we don’t feel a strong desire to go out of our way to the Waterfront Trail.

a view over a lake tha tis mostly covered with grasses and reet. There are trees on both sides, the sky is blue.

However, an opportunity arose when we were meeting with family from Kingston. Rather than driving to Kingston, we thought we should meet at Gananoque instead and bike to Rockport along the mighty St. Lawrence river. Not a huge distance, but it was supposed to be a social outing, not a fitness workout. Which I never do anyway.

A house is half hidden behind trees. An unpaved road leads to the house,

Looking at the map of Gananoque, it appears there is not a terribly safe connection from the small town on the water to the start of the trail, with a missing link in a busier part of town. We settled on meeting at a viewpoint just west of Gananoque across the entrance of Landons Bay – Thousand Islands National Park.

Back home, when I took a closer look, I noticed there is new car pool parking lot 50 meters east of the trailhead. That would have been a good place to start too, but ads 12 kilometers (2 x 6 km) to the route we biked (2 x 12 km). Doable though: the distance from the carpool parking to Rockport is 20 km.

a pathway on the shoulder of Thousand Islands Parkway. the pathway is separated from the road with concrete Jersey barriers. On the right is a sign with an arrow turning left to the toll bridge of the USA

Between Brockville (11 km SW of Brockville at Butternut Bay to be precise) and Gananoque, you can find a multi use pathway of about 40 km long, passing places such as Rockport and Ivy Lea. It runs parallel to the Thousands Islands Parkway, which can be a busy road in the summer, with touring buses, tourists in RVs, people cruising on their motorbikes and destination traffic for the Thousand Islands boat tours and of course people who live and work in the area.

a map of Gananogue with a red line indicating a cycling route. Several short stretches are considered busy and/or more stressful — The black rectangle shows where you would be cycling on the road, the red rectangle a tight stretch where you’d cross on-ramps. At the top right corner of the black rectangle is a carpool lot with washrooms (screenshot from the very extensive waterfront trail booklet (in PDF). I emailed Gananoque for an optional small future bypass, but didn’t receive a response.

There is a large grassy space between the road and the pathway, but the traffic is constantly there; I estimate most people drive about 90 kph there. What is more annoying is that you won’t see the St. Lawrence very often, as the road and trees separate you from the river. In places, the bike path is lower than the road, which doesn’t help. It is also very car oriented. If you want to cross the parkway, you have to wait for gaps in traffic as there is no place to cross, at least not between Gananoque and Rockport, the stretch we cycled.

two people with cycling helmets are sitting in a large oversized Muskoka chair along the Thousand Islands Parkway — How can you not take a picture of a giant Muskoka chair

The weather was a bit iffy. At a certain point about 8 kilometers in, a gentleman in a pick up truck flagged us down to warn us for bad weather including funnels coming towards us. Of course, there is nowhere to hide but we were close to the entrance of a club or something, so we tried to find shelter under the trees rather than on the open parkway. We had a bit of rain, but it wasn’t serious, so I guess we escaped death and destruction.

On the plus side, the pathway used to be in a less than stellar condition but was repaved several years ago. Parks Canada also rebuilt a bridge and modified the on and off ramps near the bridge to the USA. These changes made it a much nicer experience than it must have been not even that long ago.

a white clapboard building is surrounded by trees and a parking lot. Several people are waling up and down,. A tree partially obscures the building which appears to be a general store from the early 1900's — Most of Rockport in one picture. There is a large parking lot on the right

In our attempt to see the St. Lawrence River, we crossed the parkway at Rockport and submerged ourselves in the tourist waves coming from and going to the boat tours to see the Thousand Islands. There is nothing else to see, but there is a place to sit at the picnic tables on a concrete pier next to the customs building. We had brought lunch so from here we could enjoy the views and see the boats going back and forth.

a bike is parked against a metal bench. The bench overlooks a water body, which is the St Lawrence river. There is a motorboat lying in the marina and there are several islands in the background. — A pier at the customs building offers views and picnic tables

After lunch we packed up again and biked back in much nicer weather. We contemplated going into Gananoque but we decided to leave it for another day.

Red is what we biked, blue could fairly easily be added if you start from the Gananoque car pool parking (with washrooms)

On the way back to Ottawa I suggested to stop at Cheffey’s Lock, one of the locks in the Rideau Canal, a World Heritage Site. I have never seen any locks south of Merrickville and we had some time left. While being all the way out there, we did a short detour. To my surprise it is the lock station where you can find the Opinicon Resort. I had heard of the resort since Fiona and Tobi (Lütke, Shopify owner) bought it around 2020 but never really checked where it was located. So there it was and being so close, we had to check out. (here is an article with photos). We bought a big ice cream at the renovated parlour. It was worth the detour.

To be very honest, it is not the most exciting pathway I have cycled and I wouldn’t put it high on my list, but if you live close, I can see it is a great place to get your cycling hours in.

We have cycled other, more interesting parts of the Waterfront Trail, for example a stretch in Cornwall, ON. You may want to read that too.