Quebec Pt. 4(4) - Rural Quebec
The Flueve widens after Quebec City and the landscape changes very quickly as well. We're in dairy country now, and it's hilly (just nice little hills) and the roads are winding and rural.
Our pattern of stopping at each basilica continues and they make a scenic spot for snack breaks and gear adjustments.
The people look different through here. Everyone we encounter is instantly recognizable as local, and we're distancing quickly from the more touristy region of Quebec. We don't "look" like we can speak French, and they don't "look" like they can speak English. Obviously just in our heads.
These people are not in the business of tourism and are going about their lives on farms and in towns with nary a concern for who passes through. It is a bit of a time travel experience to an era before the modern automobile routes have connected our cities and larger towns with vast swaths of concrete and asphalt filled with zooming cars and noisy transport trucks.
In Quebec, bicycles are not permitted to travel on highways with a 2 digit designation. ie: the #40 or the #20. So we are traveling on the #132 which passes through the centre of each village and inserts us directly into the day to day lives of the folks who live here.
The #20 runs in parallel and we can sometimes hear the highway as cars and semis blast along missing the whole thing. We are sometimes passed by large groups of motorcyclists and many wave as though we are like them, but we are mostly separated from the main travel route through the province and we are loving every minute of it.
The church doors are all locked, from one's we've tried, reduced to monuments from an era when the Catholic Church and Provincial Government were tightly intertwined. These buildings and their ornamentation, some of which are several hundred years old, are in perfect condition and there's no way that is done without some fair expense.
We can see the North side of the river still, and we think about what we might have experienced had we continued on that side after Quebec City as was our original plan. With our ferry deadline pressuring, we elected to take the shorter, flatter path to New Brunswick, up the southern bank of the river. Despite its vastness, Ontario had really only offered one good route through for cyclists, (and we did make some mistakes), but Quebec offers many correct options, and we wish we could ride them all. We will at some point.
Perhaps because we have travelled BC so much in the past, and this region is all new to us, Quebec has comfortably been our favourite province to ride bicycles through.
It certainly helps that we’re getting perfect weather through this stretch. Like, we can barely remember what it is to travel in cold rain and cloudy skies.
Not true. We can definitely remember the cold and wet experiences in North Ontario.
We're slowly climbing away from The St. Lawrence River and further inland. A last look back across the farms, highway, river, and mountains on the other side. We're going to turn towards New Brunswick at Saint-Alexandre and short-cut to Edmundston through Riviere-Bleue.
Sophie has taken a wee bit longer route, through Riviere-du-Loup, and is about 100km ahead of us, struggling with a road block for construction, she suggested we try a different route from hers. I think she can feel that we might be trying to catch up to her. Are we? Maybe subconsciously. We like her a lot and it would be fun to roll into St. John's with her. She had said she'd like to watch us ride in a day behind her.
We got stopped for an hour at a site where a tow truck was trying to pull a tipped over semi up out of the ditch. A long line of cars had pulled up behind us and we knew that we'd have to wait for them all to clear through before the road crew would let us pass the scene.
The delay let it sink in for real that we were probably, yes indeed, very likely, trying to catch up to her. We're not really all that competitive..cough...cough...ahem....if we added maybe 20ish kilometres per day to our efforts, perhaps we could be rollin' with Sophie again by Moncton.
Ok buddy, move that truck we gotta go.
The shortcut had been a bit of a thrust back into dense forrest, hills and endless pavement, so the beautiful towns along Lac Pohenegamook came as a welcome relief. There were some weekenders dragging boats out to the lake region and the vibe on the highway had changed a bit.
Why do people who are driving a vehicle somewhere for work remain at a composed and steady pace, but when driving to a recreation place their tempo and urgency must increase? We can feel the irritability of the holidayers as they rev past.
We enjoyed every town from Pohenegamook to the New Brunswick Border. The search for food was rewarded with quality and one of our favourite grocery stops of the trip was in Sully along here. Fantastic sandwiches and a container of house-made cookies that demanded a return back inside for a second…and a third
The old train station in Riviere-Bleue.
Surely we'd seen a red tree or two by this point, but we chalked it up to perhaps the tree being 'stressed' or whatever. THIS tree was the fall alarm bell. Ok the season is changing and you'll need to maintain or increase your own "recreational" pace if you hope to get to the Atlantic before it snows. Still a long ways off.
The sun was coming down on a lovely, possibly last, day in Quebec. Our route follows along the border with Maine in the U.S. and we're winding through an area that feels about as far, culturally, as we get in Canada from the Americans. There is no English spoken for us here and we wouldn't have it any other way. We've learned a few French words and phrases by this point and we're not trying anything fancy or funny to get them to speak to us in something other than their own language.
We stopped on the bridge to try looking at our digital maps. Not much coverage, cell service coming in and out, can't get a solid enough signal to load a map and certainly not a satellite view.
We were starting to stress about where we might camp, and how far were we to New Brunswick?, and what provisions might we find before dark. You know, the usual stresses, but without our primary tool to answer those questions. No internet.
A couple of grandmas out for a stroll came across the road to us and laid a bunch of beautiful, silky, flowing romance language down....and I was about to say "whaa...." when Sherrie said "Ah Merci!" "Merci Beaucoup!"
They continued on their way with big smiles and nods, and I whispered "What just happened?"
"They said if we continue across the bridge, up the road a bit, and around to the other side of the river, then our cell phones will work."
Wow. Sherrie is like bilingual now.
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