I'm in Montreal, and will attempt a series of updates about the last week, which has been pretty much amazing. Aside from heatwaves making serious attempts on my life.
The ride from Riviere du Loup, was idyllic. Flat farmland meets the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, randomly adorned with classic fieldstone farmhouses and artisan shops selling local made spices, soaps, antiques, sculpture, art, or just plain crap.
And everyone has a vegetable garden!!! And the vegetable gardens are doing VERY well right now. All of these lush well maintained gardens have me wishing for the chance to grown my own some day (and have the time to weed it meticulously....), and then have big kitchen parties to eat it all up.
I would recommend this stretch to anyone thinking about doing any kind of trip in quebec, cyclists will love it, "la route verte" is great for the entire way, there are constant b+b's, and great shops and cafes and things to see. Driving would only take about 2 hours not including stops. There were even several long-distance walkers out and about.
During this stretch, right at the beginning, I also was stopped by my first police car. Somehow i had gotten onto the autoroute (and gone pretty far too!) without knowing that it is restricted to cyclists. In my defense, the transcanada here looked exactly as it did in nfld, nova scotia, and new brunswick; no restrictions there. The transition in riviere du loup from regular road to highway didn't include one of those handy signs saying i shouldn't be there, and i had come a good distance before having a friendly chat with the law about taking a new route. I'm pretty glad about this too, because its how i found the quebec bike path route (the paved one finally) and started to see more long distance cyslists all over the place. The drivers in Quebec tend to be ... far less encouraging ... of cyclists, however the presence of such a strong cyclist culture helps to balance that out.
so did they give you a ticket?
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