Quebec Day Four

Start: Drummondville
End: Becancour
Mileage/cumulative: 47.66 / 217.67
Elevation Ascended/cumulative: 948 / 4,262
Weather: Partly cloudy 66 degrees / Partly cloudy 63 degrees
Flat tires (entire group) day/cumulative: 1 / 1

The theme today was wind. Relentless headwinds and crosswinds blowing 15-20 mph for 47 miles. There is debate within the group about whether one would prefer rain or wind. Rain is miserable. Wind just makes you work harder. Today’s wind blew in a cold front, bringing an abrupt end to summer and a 20 degree change from just two days ago. Autumn has arrived with a bang.

Today’s route was completely different than the first three days of this trip. We were on country roads, riding past dairy farms, cornfields, and pig farms. We’ve ridden our bikes through farm country in the American Midwest but this was much more beautiful. There were rolling hills dotted with barns and silos, shallow rivers fed by the St. Lawrence, and stunning views that went for miles. Because a portion of the route was on Quebec’s Route Verte bike network, there was even a sparkling clean port-a-potty in the middle of nowhere, complete with a bike rack. This was a cyclist’s paradise.

As we neared the town of Nicolet, we stumbled across a group of Clydesdale horses grazing along the fence line bordering the road. They were only mildly interested in us but we couldn’t take our eyes off of them. These were beautiful horses and it wasn’t until later that we realized we had stumbled upon a prize winning farm for purebred Clydesdales and were just lucky to see them up close.

Nicolet was also the only municipality we passed through on today’s route. Fortunately, it has a nice boulangerie where we grabbed sandwiches and, of course, a pastry. We’ve begun to rely more heavily on Google Translate, an app that will translate text by just pointing your phone at any words. When we pointed it at a sign for apple turnovers, the translation was “Slipper / Apple”. It seems like a perfect, literal translation, so we will now call all turnovers “slippers”.

After traveling through Quebec’s Eastern Townships since leaving Montreal, we finally reunited with the St. Lawrence River as we neared the end of today’s route. We even found a small lighthouse along the eastern shore and took in grand views of the river. Tomorrow we follow the river northeast with little in the way of civilization. We have entered a stage of the trip that requires careful pre-planning to locate coffee and food stops!