CYCLING IN FLORIDA

Written by: Julie Hart
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We like to do a bit of cycling at home so Dave used his very limited computer skills to search the net and find somewhere to go in Florida. He came up with a trail not too far from out villa at Winter Garden. The West Orange Trail is 22 miles of tarmac cycle track which is almost completely flat.

We started at a place called Killarney Station where we hired the cycles, it opens at 11am on weekdays and 9 am at the weekend. From there we cycled into Winter Garden. This is a really pretty city with sidewalks and pavement cafes and shops. Even though it was quite hot in May it was comfortable as we created our own breeze and there are no tough hills.

From there the trail leads through countryside and the back of housing estates and a bit goes through a more industrial site but on the whole its very pretty, very relaxing and enjoyable. There are stations along the route with rest rooms and water fountains and we also discovered to our great relief that there were water fountains along the way which we thought were trash cans. These apparently are of a type found on golf courses and  contained deliciously cold water to refill our bottles. Its a long way between some of the stations!

We cycled for 12 miles and then decided that it was time to turn back. It’s an old railway track so it’s one way out and one way back but still interesting. We were out about 3 hours altogether and that felt about right - we might try to go further next time. You can hire cycles at Winter Garden and start there if you want to. You could get all sizes of bikes including those with trailers for kids and it was very reasonably priced. Maybe next time we’ll start at the other and and stop in Winter Garden for lunch.