August 7, 2015
Build It and They Will Come: Day 66 - Beauharnois to Granby Quebec
Quebec has done a very good job of taking old train infrastructure, utility access corridors, innovative use of existing road shoulders and what appears to be a relatively small amount of new dedicated bike infrastructure, to build a very good intra city and inter city bike path system. This feels like cycling in Western Europe.
They built it, and the people have come. Slam dunk for the egg first in the debate.
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The first result of this is that adhering to L.T. McLeod's first rule of cycle touring "stay off of main roads whenever possible" is extremely easy to do. There is a corollary to this rule which is "stay away from big cities whenever possible". Even with good bike infrastructure, big cities inevitably mean more people and some degree of dealing with car traffic either directly or indirectly through longer detoures and lots of stop and go.
Today we certainly adhered to rule 1, but we got sucked into the fallacy of trying to shave 14 km off our total planned distance and broke the corollary.
We had two routes to get to Granby. The first went well south of Montreal and it's suburbs and went along Route Vert 3 and 1. Google and Pocket Earth said this would be 143 km.
The second route started out on Route Vert 3, but then went through a number of Montreal suburbs and towns on the south shore of the St Lawrence before heading south to Granby, using urban cycle paths, and eventually connecting up with another rail line path, but not a Route Vert, into Granby. Our trusty Gps systems said this was 129 km.
Easy, we are human, we'll take the shorter one.
It was still very good cycling with about 2/3 of our total distance in rural areas, but when we finally got to Granby, after 137 km, we realized that we put up with about 45 km of urban cycling on loaded touring bikes that we could have done without. When we were in the country it was Spiritual Creaminess with a beautiful rythmic pace. When we were in the city it was the Chewy Chunks of Degradation as we had stop and go traffic and degraded paths and the kerchunk kerchunk of 2 cm curbs as we rode along sidewalks converted to bike lanes. (Thanks to Jim Carrey and Ace Ventura for the wonderful descriptors)
Lesson learned, stick to the Rural Route Vert routes whenever possible for the best cycling. You have to travel further but the journey will be better. I hope this does not come off as negative, because the cycling was all good, it's just that the rural Route Vert 3 and 1 that we were on was superb cycling, and this trumped the mearly 'good' elsewhere.
We had a reasonably early start to the day after a very pleasent stay at La Hostellerie Suroit, thanks Brigitte and Guy. You take care of cyclists very well.
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Although we got an early start, we only cycled 3 km before we had to make our first stop. Yesterday I had mentioned that we stumbled upon our hotel, thanks to Siri, as we were surrounded by an Aluminum smelter and a very large hydro electric generating station. Well, the hydro plant is also beside the Beauharnois Locks, one of the first locks on the St Lawrence Seaway, an engineering marvel that allowed the middle of North America to have direct shipping access to the sea. This required some picture and poking around.
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My inner engineer satisfied, we were then biking away an Route Vert 3. Our first 10 km were in the countryside heading to St Martine. Beautiful riding and fantastic bike paths, complete with over passes across major highways. Bikes are seen to be an equally valued method of transportation here. Kudos to Quebec.
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After St Martine we started to work our way back to the 'burbs of Montreal at Brossard through some very pastoral dairy farming country. It was around noon when we got back into the built up urban area and we came across another Quebec classic, the Dairy Bar, basically an ice cream and hot dog stand. This one was right by the river and bike paths, had a nice patio and tables in front, and had quite a few other bikers at it. When in Rome ....
This also gave me an opportunity for another first .... Poutine. I know this has become very trendy throughout the country, but I've never been tempted by it before. However it's been a long time since I've been consistently burning 4000 calories a day. If there was ever a time to treat my arteries to this pleasure, it was now.
Un número huite pour moi, et un número quatre pour ma Femme.
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Once we got through Brossard we were back into country cycling on a combination of hard pack cinders (good) and paved bike paths (excellent) all the way to Granby. Not many pics, we were just pedalling away in the late afternoon sun. We checked in to another Route Vert recommended B&B and then had another great meal at La Fringal. Odd twist in licensing laws, you had to bring your own wine and beer here, no problem, there was a SAC just down the street. One cold German Pilsner each and a very good Tuscan red and we were set. Another great day in Quebec.
Song of the day:
Sympathique an Edith Piaf classic covered by Pink Martini
This is a bit of a French lounge lizard song, and the chorus roughly translates as " I don't want to work, I don't want to eat, I just want to forget, and so I smoke'
When we were stuffing down our Poutine at lunch, there was another group of three people sitting near us. A couple about our age or a little older, and an older lady who was probably one of their mothers. They were all very smartly dressed. The 'younger' couple were eating, but the older lady looked completely nonplussed. She eventually got up, lit a smoke and floated across the patio, smoke entrails wafting out of her nose and mouth, oblivious to the growing ash hanging off the end of her cigarette as it brushed past my shoulder, and there it was ...... Song of the day. Couldn't get it out of my head.
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Historical monument of the day:
Beauharnois Lock and the St Lawrence Seaway.
There is no end of old historic stuff to pick from here. This may not be the oldest, but it's one of the most significant things that went into our nation building.
Today's ride: 137 km (85 miles)
Total: 6,033 km (3,746 miles)
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