Eastern Townships 2013, Day 4: Lennoxville to Mansonville

< back to day 3 > forward to day 5
Until now, the weather on our ride had been perfect: sunny but not too hot during, and cool but not cold during the nights. During the night at our motel, however, we could hear the first rain, and when dragged ourselves out of bed it was very gray outside. It wasn't exactly raining, but the air was oversaturated with water, leaving fine drops on our skin and clothing on the way to breakfast. Lennoxville not only sports a fine brewpub, but also a great coffee roaster. We had spotted the place the previous night and already decided that it looked like a perfect place to have breakfast.

The barrista was very nice and started geeking out with me about cold brew coffee, but he also seemed slightly overcaffeinated and totally forgot the biketopus's cream cheese bagel. The bagel and our drinks were very tasty, however, and we would definitely go there again.While having our breakfast we figured out our plan for the day. We decided to follow the Route Verte back to Magog and then either call a potential warmshowers -- a couchsurfing for cyclists network -- host in Mansonville or find a campground somewhere near Magog.

The weather forecast predicted showers throughout the day and possibly heavy thunderstorms in the late afternoon. For now, it was merely grey and humid. Out of Lennoxville the Route Verte follows the Massawippi River on what appears to be a rail trail. For the first time, we were slightly chilly in shorts and short sleeve jerseys -- but not cold enough to actually add another layer. The trail was almost completely empty, but after switching to the road near North Hatley we encountered two fully loaded cyclists. This was a rare occurrence, as the vast majority of cyclists we had encountered on our trip so far had either been people on day trips or maybe credit card tourers.

North Hatley is located on the northern end of Lake Massawippi. Whereas our route so far had been as flat as is typical for a rail trail, the road out of Hatley was the first of many mean hills still to come today. First on highway 108, then on a short, steep and wholly unnecessary section of trail, and then on a muddy dirt road we climbed from lake level up the surrounding hills. The dirt road was closed due to construction but we fortunately could get through. The landscape was a mix of forests and a bit of agriculture, and we didn't encounter many cars or people. We descended on a dead straight dirt road with just the right gradient to go fast but not too fast.

After crossing the highway we were on a trail again, traversing a dense forest before ending up at a municipal park. There was a mismatch between where my GPS wanted us to go and where the Route Verte signs pointed to, and after a short Clif Bar break we decided to go with the signs. This turned out to be the right decision and soon after we were back at where the two routes into Sherbrooke split.

The way back to Magog was uneventful except for some mosquito attacks when we were trying to take a nature break in the forest. We followed the same way as yesterday but took a shortcut on the main road into Magog to avoid some Route Verte stupidities. Just in time for lunch we were back at Marché Vegetarien. The promenade on the lake today was much emptier than yesterday. We finally had to put on our rain jackets to protect us from the cold wind blowing over the lake. It was still unclear what the day's final destination should be. It was well past noon and to Mansonville it still would be a long and hilly way. Calling Jacques, our potential host, settled the matter: we would stay with him tonight. He was very friendly on the phone and promised us a bed, dinner, and beer -- "that's the Eastern Townships way." To my question if there were many hills between Magog and Mansonville he just laughed out loud...

And yes, there were more than enough hills. Right after turning off the Route Verte, a big hill appeared in front of us and for the rest of the day the elevation profile looked like a sawblade. For the first time on our tour we were no longer following a bike route but rode on gorgeous country roads. To me this is the best kind of riding. Traffic was minimal and it was finally dry enough for me to pull out my camera.

We were now headed straight south towards the Vermont border, following the western shoreline of Lac-Memphremagog.

Other than cows, small family cemeteries, and a beautiful landscape, there isn't much.

The sky looked as if it was about to start raining any minute, but amazingly the weather held up all the way to Mansonville.

At 5pm we quickly called Jacques to let him know that we were getting close. To our delight, he told us that from here on it was only more climb and then all the way downhill into Mansonville.

Mansonville is a cute little town that I had ridden through previously on my 300km brevets. We had been warmshowers members for a while now and hosted several bike tourists in Montreal, but this was the first time that we ourselves stayed with someone from warmshowers. Jacques and his wife Allison were great hosts! They provided great food, beer, a cute dog, and excellent conversation. Jacques, amongst other things, works as a guide for a bike touring company and had just gotten back from a ride in the Lower Saint Lawrence region.

Shortly after dinner, we exhaustedly and happily passed out in our comfy bed. This had been the hardest day of the tour!

> forward to day 5

Eastern Townships 2013, Day 3: Mont-Orford National Park to Lennoxville

<  back to day 2 forward to day 4 >

The night in the tent was quite a bit warmer than the previous one. We had closed both sides of the rain fly, which probably was a good idea not just for temperature regulation but also for keeping wildlife in check. Campground staff had warned us about a raccoon problem and we had spotted a couple of them before going to bed. Our neighbor, who slept in a hammock, told us in the morning that the 'coons had kept him awake for a good while when they were fighting over a plastic bag and ran around his bike and hammock. We hadn't heard any of this, me because of my preventative use of ear plugs, the biketopus because of her ability to sleep through that kind of stuff after a long day on the bike.

After my nice evening swim, I definitely wanted to make sure that the biketopus would get to see the lovely lake as well, and so after packing up we headed down to the lake instead of back up to the Route Verte. It was still very empty and quiet at the beach, but we knew that there was a long day ahead of us and we got going again. According to the map, the main park road woul
d intersect with the Route Verte after a few kilometers and so we decided to spare ourselves the potential up and down of the trail. The park road was very quiet still and the scenery was really lovely.

Morning at the Lac-Stukely beach

Our destination for the day was Lennoxville, a small town just outside Sherbrooke, where we had booked a motel for the night. Sherbrooke is quite a bit lower than the Mont Orford Park, but this by no means meant that it'd be a nice downhill all day. The climbing started as soon as we got on the Route Verte at the Étang aux cerises, another beautiful lake in the National Park.

On the park road

Étang aux cerises -- not exactly a swamp

Through the dense forest of the National Park the Route Verte meandered up and down. The climbs weren't long, but some of them were steep enough to force me off the bike for the first time on this trip.

Leaving the park

Once we had exited the park, we got a short reprieve from the up and down. First on a gravel trail, then on a stunning dirt road, we zoomed downhill to the small town of Orford.

Perfect dirt road

We had a second breakfast at the local grocery/prepared foods store. The following 10 kilometers would have made a great exhibit for a bike-infrastructure-planned-by-non-cyclists blackbook. The route awkwardly looped around Orford, and while doing do continued to include every little climb possible. More than once did we fantasize about putting one of the Route Verte planners on a fully loaded touring bike and making them ride the route 5 times in a row...

Huh, now we're heading towards Mont Orford? I thought that's where we came from...

Fortunately, the great weather and scenic landscape mostly made up for the planning SNAFUs and after not too long we reached Lac Memphremagog and the town of Magog on its nothern tip.

Is Lac Memphremagog's Nessie called Messie?

It was time to have lunch again, and we were happy to spot a "Marche Vegetarien" right next to the lake promenade. It was a little suspicious that a vegetarian market would include a butcher's and a fish shop, but hey, they did have a good selection of tasty veggie foods.

Our lunch spot was a picnic table overlooking the lake that stretches all the way into northern Vermont.

The view from our lunch spot

The route out of Magog was mostly unremarkable. A little bit of gratuitous up and down, some riding through industrial areas, and then long, straight gravel trails through the forest. After passing Lac Magog, much smaller than Lac Memphremagog, the bike route forks: The official Route Verte crosses the Magog River and leads south to Lac Massawippi before entering Sherbrooke from the southeast; the other route follows the Magog river northeast into Sherbrooke. After the previous days' experience with the Route Verte, we suspected that the former option would not only be farther, but might also include who-know-how-many hills. Therefore, we decided to take the easier option this time and save the Route Verte for tomorrow.

The ride into Sherbrooke was mostly uneventful and because of the proximity of the river very pretty. A friend of ours who spent a lot of time in Sherbrooke for work had warned us that the city itself was rather boring. The view from the cycling path, however, made it seem pretty nice, though. Sherbrooke is located at the confluence of the Magog and the Saint-François rivers, and this is also where the Axe de la Magog and the Route Verte meet together again. To get to our destination, we followed the Route Verte and the Saint-François southeast for about ten kilometers until we reached the campus of Bishop's University.

You can't see the sign, but this is a sewing atelier. The biketopus was jealous!

Bishop's is one of the three primarily English language universities in Quebec and the only one outside of Montreal. Consequently, Lennoxville had a pretty anglo feel to it. At our hotel, La Paysanne, most of the cars had Ontario license plates -- parents dropping off their children for the new school year. After having made ourselves a little more presentable and me going on a short reconnaissance ride to make sure they were open, we walked into the town center to what is the oldest brewpub in Quebec, the Lion d'Or / Golden Lion. On their lovely patio we enjoyed some beers before getting some grocery store foods for me and a gigantic poutine for the biketopus, to be eaten in our comfortable bed.

forward to day 4 >

Eastern Townships 2013, Day 2: Ange-Gardien to Mont-Orford National Park

< back to day 1 > forward to day 3

The night in the tent was cold. We had left one side of the rain fly open for better ventilation, and to save some space and weight I had brought only my middle-of-the-summerßweight sleeping bag. The bright morning sun and a cup of coffee warmed me up quickly, though.

As it is usually the case on the first few days of a tour, it took us a while to get ready; but by 9:45 we were on the road again. Our tentative plan for the day was to make it to Mont Orford National Park, about 80 kilometers and a bunch of climbing. We knew that this might be a challenge; but since there were a number of other campgrounds along the route we went for it anyway.

The road from the campground was mostly empty on this beautiful Saturday morning, and after only a few kilometers we reached the Route Verte 1.

Our progress towards Granby was slightly delayed when another cyclist flagged us down to ask where he was. There was clearly some mismatch between the distance he said he wanted to go and his degree of familiarity with the route. We did our best to guide him on the right way but I'm not entirely sure if we didn't just confuse him more...

It was a bit longer into Granby than anticipated, and so we stopped for a quick Clif Bar somewhere on the trail. By the time we arrived at the lake near Granby's downtown it wasn't quite time for lunch yet, but we stopped at a grocery store in order to stock up. Most larger grocery stores in Quebec offer a decent selection of prepared foods, and we enjoyed our third breakfast on the shore of Lac-Boivin.

Fountain in Lac-Boivin in Granby

Third breakfast

Kiss the flatlands goodbye!

Bike traffic on the Route Verte had picked up a lot -- everyone, from hand cyclists, families with tag-alongs, or what looked like the local e-bike club, was enjoying the day on their rides. Whereas so far our ride had been dead flat, in Granby we would start seeing the mountains of the Eastern Townships. Our route also started climbing, but for now it was just the gentle grade of the Estriade, a rail trail.

But a climb is a climb and so we were happy when we reached a lovely bike rest area at the outskirts of Waterloo. Toilets, water, picnic tables, two folks from the local tourist info, and a restored caboose made for an excellent spot for having lunch.

Inside, there was a model railway and information about the Estriade and its history

Waterloo's significance for cycling lies in the fact that it's home to the headquarters of Raleigh Canada. Raleigh bikes are still being manufactured there today. Not for much longer, though, as Raleigh announced at the beginning of 2013 that production will be shut down by the end of the year.

The Estriade ends in Waterloo, and the Route Verte continues on the appropriately named Montagnarde. Right after getting out of town, we were on a rough gravel path along a pipeline corridor -- and the climbing got a lot tougher. The path ended soon and for the next hours we'd be riding on magnificent gravel roads. Riding on gravel roads is all the rage these days, and no matter if you buy into the hype or not: they make for some fine riding! We encountered very few cars and the road surface was smooth enough to not cause any discomfort.

Discomfort was only caused by the relentless up and down of the route. Steep climbs were followed by rapid descents, through a pastoral landscape of meadows, forests, and mountains.

Gravel,

gravel,

and gravel.

The road, called Chemin de la Diligence, leads straight west for many kilometers. Close to the village of Stukely, there suddenly were dozens of cars parked along the side of the road -- as it turns out there was a Country music festival going on.

Yee-haw!

Not exactly our kind of scene, and so we we continued. The direction of the road didn't change, but now it was paved again. This made the big hill out of Stukely that we had seen from the summit of the previous ascent a little less challenging. But both the biketopus and I started to feel the effects of the up and down on our legs. I announced every 10 meters of climbing that we completed to keep us motivated.

Someone needs to hook that up to a fatbike

Big hill out of Stukely

Almost there!

Fortunately, this was the last major climb of the day. After a very fast descent, we reached Lac d'Argent. There are two very nice looking campgrounds right on the lake and we pondered if we should maybe just stay there instead of continuing the remaining kilometers -- and an unknown amount of climbing -- to the National Park. At any rate, we would have to get groceries first, and so the biketopus took a break on a big rock while I rode into the town of Eastman.

Eastman had some very tempting looking restaurants with sunny porches, and was just generally bustling with weekenders. But I just got food and a cold sixpack and returned to the biketopus. After some deliberation, we decided to just continue to the park. The Route Verte guidebook had a warning of an above 10% climb on the way there, but whatever! The path from Eastman to the park is a gravel trail through quiet woods. And while there were a few steep climbs, we were very happy to have finally reached the park border and soon after the turn-off to the campground without any hills worthy of a warning sign.

Most national parks in Quebec have introduced new cyclist-only campsites this year, similar to the hiker-biker sites in US National and State Parks on the West Coast. This means that cyclists have priority, no reservation is required, and they're a little cheaper than the other campsites. Other than one other cyclists who was going the opposite direction, from Sherbrooke to Montreal, we had the nice space all to ourselves.The normal campground, in contrast, was fully booked.

Bienvenue Cyclistes!

Whereas at the previous campground at least cold showers had been free, at the park all kinds of showering cost $1 for 4 minutes. Not exactly unreasonable, but grouchy me was unwilling to pay and instead hopped on his bike to ride to the nearby Lake Stukely. This turned out to be a great decision. The lake is absolutely beautiful, and this was emphasized even more by the sun just about to set. I floated around in the clean, warm water for a while before washing my hair over a sink and then pedaling back to our campsite. This was clearly the best campground on our trip.

Lac Stukely in the morning

As I realized only after returning home, unfortunately my GPS had crashed at some point during the ride, and therefore the track below is missing the last third of the ride.


> forward to day 3

Eastern Townships 2013, Day 1: Montreal to Ange-Gardien

Over the course of the year, the Biketopus and I had loosely talked about doing a long bike tour this summer. The Biketopus will start a busy new job next year and so we wanted to take the opportunity to be on the road for more than just a few days. We discussed various options -- taking the bikes on our France work/vacation trip, touring in my native Germany, or maybe going out to the US West Coast. In the end, we decided to stay close to home: start in Montreal and go east for about two weeks, taking the Route Verte 1 to Quebec City, continuing along the Saint Lawrence, and then cutting across the Gaspesie peninsula. Unfortunately, we had a family emergency just before the planned start of the tour and therefore had to modify our plans. The trip was trimmed down to one week and about 600km of riding in a loop from Montreal.



I planned the route using my local knowledge of the region, gained on my long solo rides and brevets, the Route Verte guidebook, and the Strava global heatmap. I knew that 600km in one week would be pushing it, especially if you keep in mind that as a rule of thumb you have to add about 10% distance in order to get a realistic estimate. But since the last part of the ride would be in well-known territory I knew that I could always come up with a shortcut if necessary.

Preparation for the ride was a bit hectic. As per usual, Wolfgang, my trusty Surly Cross-Check, would be carrying most of the gear, and as I had recently switched out the fork to a disc-brake compatible one, I had to install a new front rack, a Tubus Tara. Other than that and switching one of Wolfgang's badly worn tires, both our bikes were in pretty good shape. The night before our departure, we finished packing all our gear, and on Friday morning it was time to load up. Wolfgang was burdened with two Ortlieb Front Rollers, my recently acquired Back Roller Pluses, the REI Half Dome Plus tent, and a little army surplus handlebar bag. All together, bike and gear weighed in at about 39kg, if our luggage scale is to be trusted. Madge, the Biketopus's Fuji Touring, had one rear pannier and the classic Thermarest on the rack.

All the preparation paid off, and on Friday morning, at 9:30 we left home -- even half an hour earlier than planned! Originally, the first stage of the ride would have led us almost to Granby, but since one of the campgrounds there was full and the other one didn't have potable water(?!), we aimed for a campground near Ange-Gardien.

At the request of the Biketopus, we left the island of Montreal via the Champlain Bridge Ice Control Structure (Estacade) and were then planning to get to the South Shore at the Saint-Lambert locks. Unfortunately, a big ship was just about to enter the locks, which would have meant at least a 30 minute delay. Instead, we decided to detour via the Jacques Cartier Bridge, adding a few kilometers and, more importantly, the first steep climb of our trip. Pushing Wolfgang up that incline was a sharp reminder that I was no longer riding my 11-34 MTB cassette like on the last tour, but merely a 13-26. Oh well, too late.

Cockpit panda of Wolfgang and me

On the South Shore, we took our first little break on the Route Verte 1, which we would follow for the next 30km into Chambly -- a familiar route to both of us.

Time for a second breakfast

Wolfgang and Madge

The weather was glorious: a little humid, but clear blue skies, pleasant temperatures and nice tailwind.

After getting out of the suburbs, the nice riding begins

We got into the pretty town of Chambly just in time for lunch. Usually I ride through Chambly only on the weekends, when it is full of cyclists and other tourists; today, however, the many cafés and restaurants weren't very busy. We ate at Marius, which was maybe a little overpriced, but offered a terrace with a great view of Lac Chambly.

Before we got going again, I had to re-tighten Madge's handlebars. Unfortunately, somewhere in the process of packing up again, I left behind both my bike gloves and the padlock for our bikes -- something I realized only many kilometers further along.

After passing the first set of locks on the Chambly Canal, we left the Route Verte, crossed the Richelieu River and got onto the Route des Champs. This involves some confusing zig-zagging in the towns of Richelieu and Marieville, but also a newly paved stretch of road with wide bike lanes. The first half of the Route des Champs is on well-maintained gravel. As the name of the route implies, it leads mostly through fields and isn't particularly exciting.

Gravel portion of the Route des Champs

A happy Biketopus

In Saint-Cesaire, we stopped to get dinner ingredients and a new padlock. I made some fun of the biketopus of managing to spend 40 dollars at the supermarket, but I guess that's what happens if you go grocery shopping while hungry. To get to the campground, we had to leave the Route des Champs just after Saint-Cesaire, first on a nice country road, then for a short stretch on a busy highway with a narrow shoulder, and then again on a nice country road out of the village of Ange-Gardien.

The final stretch of the ride dragged on a little longer than expected and we re-checked Google Maps to make sure we were on the right track. Indeed, we were, and after the next turn Camping Mon Repos appeared. We were happy to see that their sign included a cyclist:

The campground itself was probably the largest one I've ever been to (not that that means much), and on first sight its primary audience were clearly not cyclists but seasonal campers with RVs and trailers. 

Three pools!

Not bike campers...

To get to our campsite, we had to ride over a kilometer to the outer edge of the campground. Once we got, there, however, we were pleasantly surprised: a huge grassy spot with fire pits and picnic tables, surrounded by trees. There was enough space for at least eight tents, but we had it all to ourselves!

Somewhat less pleasant was the fact that one had to pay for hot water in the showers. Not so much a problem for me, as I always shower cold anyway, but the Biketopus instead chose to just go for a swim in one of the three pools. After a big dinner and a couple of beers, we crawled into our sleeping bags and dozed off.




> continue to day 2