Winter Garden, Orlando

Travel distance/time from Florida Delight (32 miles: 44 minutes)

Winter Garden is a pretty little town slightly north west of Orlando. It is situated on the West Orange Trail which is a 250 mile coast to coast cycle track and so we decided it would be ideal to combine visiting the area with a cycle ride.

We hired 6 bikes from Bikes and Blades which is 5 miles north of Winter Garden and the cycle route is easy going, scenic and flat! About two miles from the starting point you will come to a church on the left. If you turn left and cycle past the church you will come to the entrance of a wildlife area and you can park your bikes and walk the 1/3^rd mile along a boardwalk through the trees to a lake which is a really good “pitstop”.

Arriving in Winter Garden itself we found there are plenty of places to park bikes. It is not a large town, and is (from what we saw) mostly a main street with various restaurants, small shops, coffee bars and a museum. All very nice.

We had lunch at a restaurant called Moon Cricket Grille which was recommended to us by a waitress at a coffee shop we visited. We all enjoyed our lunch, and they even have 99 beers to choose from!

We will definitely visit Winter Garden again although next time we would like to go on a Saturday as that is the day that they hold their weekly Farmers’ Market. We also want very much to visit Plant Street Market which is an indoor, artisan market which is also attached to an award winning craft beer brewing company but I only became aware of Plant Street Market since doing further research on Winter Garden following our first visit.

Much as we loved the combination of cycling and visiting the town, next time we will just drive to Winter Garden as that will give us more time to explore.