This was a day of sunshine and heavy showers – the first of its kind since leaving England. Jackets on, or off? Stop and wait for it to pass, or carry on? I haven’t had so many difficult decisions to make for weeks. 

The first leg of todays ride took us to Geneva, at the head of another of the Finger Lakes. The only thing missing, as you’ll see from the photo, was Mont Blanc in the background.

 
We rode south down the lakeside road, with more posh houses with boats on the jetties. After about 10 miles, halfway down the lake we turned east. This took us through Sampson State Park, an abandoned army base, on a traffic free road through woods. There was a museum with some hardware outside.

 We climbed to the village of Ovid, before a descent to the next Finger Lake. This one had a huge rain squall roaring down it from the north, and we got soaked briefly as we headed north along the shore, watching the curtains of rain move down the lake. Just like being in the Lake District!

  
We stopped in Ithaca for lunch. This is a very trendy town, full of students from Cornell, even at this time of year it seems. We ate outside (under an awning, just in case) for the first time for weeks. It was a shortish day – so the lunch became quite an extended period of people watching!

Then it was off up the steepest hill since the Teton Pass. But not so high! At the top is the campus of Cornell University. I was curious enough to want to see an Ivy League campus – but without any connection to work, of course! So we wandered round the impressive array of buildings and facilities for a while.

  
The final section took us off the campus, through more rain showers, and cross country to Cortland – very clearly the poor relation to Ithaca. On the way we saw an Amish family driving one of their traditional horse drawn buggies. The hotel in Cortland is excellent, and there is a steak house next door, so we are set up for tomorrow!