My first impressions of Quebec: As the days blurred together

June 30, 2016

The first thing I noticed about Quebec was that the phone number for the police was unnecessarily long

I was in Quebec! Finally I felt like I was making some very real progress across this huge country. And in some ways I was further helped by the fact that I now felt like I was in a completely different country. Things had changed, people spoke French, like the old man who saw me trying to clamber over slippery rocks to take a dip in a lake, and shouted at me in his gallic tongue. My GCSE French was just good enough to identify the word ‘plage’ as meaning beach, and that he was indicating that there was a very fine one just around the corner. And it was true, there was a very fine one just around the corner. It had a sofa on it. What could be finer than that?

The only thing that would make it finer would be if it actually faced the lake

But my hopes that the shoulders would become much better now that I was out of Ontario were not immediately fulfilled. In fact I was soon on the very worst of roads, with a sandy, impossible-to-cycle on shoulder, lots of trucks, lots of flies. It was the most horrible of circumstances. I prayed for a miracle. Then I got one, at an intersection when I turned south onto a new road, with a paved shoulder and a headwind. Normally turning into a headwind would have made me curse, but this one had the positive effect of making the flies bugger off, and consequently I thought it rather a magnificent thing.

Quebec seemed to be quite alright after that. At my first big town, Rouyn Noranda, I went into a giant supermarket and felt like I was in France and that was good, just to have something different. Canada is great but it is just so big, that you can end up cycling through the same landscape for days and weeks on end without it changing. A different atmosphere helped. The people also seemed quite friendly, though that unfortunately spilled over into them honking their horns at me in support when they saw me, something I did not appreciate in the least as it never failed to make me jump in fright.

I was pleased to see bicycles were popular in Quebec, even if I didn't see any cyclists yet

One night I wild camped overlooking a giant pit

It seemed the caterpillars had disappeared, but I saw no butterflies. How does that work, then?

I broke a spoke, and fixed it in a Walmart parking lot

100 kilometres after Rouyn Noranda came Val-dór, a beautifully French name, but the last town for a while. Another long section of wilderness kept me occupied for the next few days. Once again it was all trees and lakes, but this time no animals for me to spot or to steal my food. The shoulder was now good and there was nothing for it but to ride and ride, the days passing, blurring into one another as I counted down the kilometres to Mont Laurier, and the start of the fabulous bicycle routes that would carry me on to Montreal, Quebec City, and beyond.

A great many such motorhomes the size of buses travelled this way, usually with a boat or a pick-up being towed behind, sometimes with both, sometimes also with motorcycles

One night I pulled off the road into the trees to camp and was amazed to find a long strip of wide concrete hidden amongst the trees. It seemed to be some old abandoned airstrip of some kind. I wandered across it and made camp in the trees on the far side of it. The next morning, confident I was alone, I had a bit of a lie-in before finally deciding that I must get up. I packed up and pushed my bike back to the airstrip. I knew it was silly but prudence made me look down the airstrip before I crossed it, just to make sure that there weren’t any planes coming. Goodness, I was glad that I did - a light aircraft was hurtling down the runway in my direction. Stunned, I quickly ducked back into the trees and out of harms way as the plane lifted up into the air just in front of me.

Thursday 30th June – 117km

Friday 1st July – 71km

Saturday 2nd July – 97km

Sunday 3rd July – 101km

Monday 4th July – 86km

Today's ride: 472 km (293 miles)
Total: 53,886 km (33,463 miles)

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