Leaving Quebec City wasn’t as tough as our arrival, no 19% hills to climb or descend. Instead we took a long way around and only had a bit of climbing. If we ever come back we would come in this way too. The first 10 km or so out of Quebec is on Boulevard Champlain, a wonderful flat paved cycleway along the St. Lawrence. We were now following La Route Verte 5 which isn’t quite as nice as #1, more road sharing, often small farm roads and sometimes on a quiet-ish highway. The forecast showed a very good chance of rain on this day and we managed to ride most of the way before it started. We hid out in a Tim Hortons for a bit but eventually had to face the downpour. It was a relatively short shower but we did arrive in Port Neuf wet and dirty. However, our lovely room in the B&B had a washer and dryer! Sometimes we are very lucky.
The next day we rode to Trois-Rivières. It was a hard ride against a strong wind for most of the day so we were pretty beat when we arrived. We saw other cyclists that day, all going the other direction, so much smarter than us. I guess it’s the same as home, the wind is usually from the west. Luckily we had planned 2 nights here so had a day to recover. Trois-Rivières is an interesting city with a long history going back to the 17th century. We weren’t able to visit any museums as everything is closed on Monday but still were able to do a self guided walking tour to learn about the history. There were also many murals here to admire. We were surprised to see that large cruise ships are able to dock here. The St. Lawrence is a big deep river even this far inland.
The next leg of the journey back to Montréal was to Berthierville, almost 80 kms and still some wind but not as strong and relatively little climbing. This is a flat area around the river and prone to flooding we learned. We were too tired to do anything after our arrival and we stayed in a charming log house B&B run by a Romanian family that offered both supper and breakfast so we could stay put. Lucky again.
The next day’s ride to Terrebonne was another long one due to part of our route being “barre” for construction resulting in a fairly big detour for us and another almost 80 kms to cover. On the bright side it was quite a nice day with light wind only so we were lucky yet again. Terrebonne is a good sized city north of Montréal on the Rivière des Mille Îles (maybe not a thousand islands but many). We stayed in the old Terrebonne area which was very charming with many historic buildings, one of which was our B&B. Right beside the old city are a few of those 1000 islands with old mills (moulins), barns, farmhouses, etc. It reminded me of Heritage Park at home.
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