Quebec Day Five

Start: Becancour
End: St Apollinaire
Mileage/cumulative: 73.60 / 291.27
Elevation Ascended/cumulative: 1,650’ / 5,912
Weather: Start – Partly Cloudy 51 degrees / Finish – Mostly Sunny 58 degrees
Flat tires (entire group) day/cumulative: 1 / 1

Everyone was sporting their cold weather gear for the start of Day Five. Yesterday was windy but warm enough to get by with shorts and jerseys. Today was windy and colder, so the arm warmers, leg warmers, vests, and jackets all came out. Most of the group was happy for cold temperatures. Nobody was happy about the damn wind.

The first 30 miles or so were nothing to write home about. That stretch was more industrial with more cars and trucks than we’ve experienced. None of the route was on dedicated bike paths but we had decent shoulders to ride on and drivers were, for the most part, respectful. With few exceptions, we’ve found drivers extremely polite to cyclists, yielding the right of way to us, stopping for us at trail crossings, and keeping a safe distance when passing us. Today was the first time we’ve encountered rude drivers and there were only a couple of them. Not bad for five days of riding. In America, that would have taken five minutes.

We eventually came to the small town of Saint-Pierre-les-Becquets. This poor town had its entire Main Street torn up. This was no partial resurfacing or patch job. The entire length of the road had been bulldozed, leaving rutted gravel and muddy holes. Our route was to take us through the town, continuing up the east side of the river but when we reached the end of town, the road was simply gone, replaced by bulldozers carving out a new road. At this point, our calm, cool trip leader said “how the hell do we get out of this town?” We backtracked, gathered together, and thanks to a member of our group who was able to get directions from one of the road construction crew, eventually found our way out of town with a five mile detour.

Saint-Pierre-les-Becquets was also the site of a lighthouse on the St. Lawrence River. Led by Bev, we were intent on finding it and because it was in a park with the fancy name Parc Fluvial Les-Becquets (translation: Les-Becquets River Park), we were expecting a beautiful lighthouse that looked like a larger scale version of this one:

We let out a big “woo-hoo” when we saw the sign for the park and turned left for the entrance. Our mood dimmed when we saw that the park, with its lighthouse, was at the bottom of a ridiculously steep (27% grade, it turns out) hill. The lighthouse wasn’t visible due to tree cover so Bev asked if I wanted to ride down the hill, knowing that we would have to ride back UP it to get back on the route. I said “sure – we’ll never be here again”. So we rode down the hill to discover this:

This is not a light house. There is no house. This is a lightbulb on a stick. And the “river park” is a parking lot with four benches facing the river. Once we stopped laughing and took a few photos, we rode back up that hill, feeling like we were on a mountain top finish in the Tour de France except all that was waiting for us at the top was that same torn up road through town.

Our next planned stop held more promise because it was at a boulangerie. We’ve reached a point in the trip where we can compare boulangerie experiences and this one, the boulangerie du Chêne, in Leclercville,  jumped to the top of the list, a true five-star bakery! Cinnamon rolls with maple butter, croissants, baguettes, lattes in vessels that looked like soup bowls. This is also where we learned that in Quebec, if you purchase six pastries there is no sales tax charged and that, for this purpose, croissants are considered pastries.  We’re not sure how it took until Day Five to discover this critical piece of information, but we all agreed that it should be something highlighted in a pamphlet handed to Americans when they enter the province. I am now learning how to say “I would like any six pastries” in French.

Finally, one of the many things I love about Bev is the soft spot she has for older persons and animals. So, as we were getting ready to leave the bakery, I was not surprised to see her speaking with an elderly French-Canadian man sitting at an outdoor table. He had begun speaking to Bev in French and when she said “Je ne parle pas français” (I don’t speak French), he replied that he was trying to learn English. They spoke about the benefits of learning new languages and he shared that forty years ago he spent a year in Peru and learned Spanish. Bev told him that she knows the French word for dog, which led to him quiz her, in his broken English, about other animals. Do you know the French word for cat? How about horse? What about sheep? The two of them were fully engaged – an elderly man teaching Bev animal names in French. It seemed like a perfect union.

Leaving the boulangerie du Chêne, we decided as a group to deviate from our planned inland route and, instead, stay on the road following the St. Lawrence the rest of the way, giving us nice views of the river for the last 25 miles.

A short 30-mile route and a ferry ride across the St. Lawrence River on Day Six takes us into Quebec City, where we’ll spend two nights and enjoy a rest day.