A pair of Thorns in West Québec

[in4]

John spent a lot of time on Komoot and OmsAnd, and the result was a 600 km circle tour spent mostly on pleasant secondary/tertiary  roads and converted rail trails. During the relatively small amount of time we spent on primary highways the traffic was generally courteous and well behaved. There is a surprising amount of roadway in rural Québec that has not been visited by the Google Street view car. As a result, there were a few surprise gravel road segments to add variety to the trip.

Is that a Carradice ( Barley?) on the handlebars?
Very enticing location to ride.  🤔 😊

[RonS]

Is that a Carradice ( Barley?) on the handlebars?
Very enticing location to ride.  🤔 😊

I must remember not to "hang my laundry" from the bike when photographing.

My bike sports an Arkel handlebar bag, and I think John was using his Altura bag.

Québec is a nice place to ride, with excellent provisions for cyclists.

Here are a few more photos

[John Saxby]

Ron & John in West Québec -- Notes on our route:

Following is a general description of our route and the terrain.

The basic idea was to give Ron a chance to explore rural and small-town Québec in the region east and north of Ottawa; and to do so at a pace that was manageable for both of us.

Our route was a counter-clockwise flattened circle, 600 kms in length:  From my place in Ottawa east to Plaisance on the north shore of the Ottawa River; north on secondary roads to the Mont-Tremblant area (a locally famous skiing resort); northwest on a rail trail to the town of Mont-Laurier; southwest to the historic lumber town of Maniwaki on the Gatineau River, 130 kms due north of Ottawa; south from Maniwaki via another rail trail, and then cutting southwest through the back country towards the ferry that crosses the Ottawa at the town of Quyon; and from there home to the west-central part of Ottawa via the villages of Fitzroy Harbour and Carp.

(I had hoped to generate a single Google map of our route, but the Google-wallah wasn’t having any of it, insisting that we should be following a speedier route on main highways, largely avoiding RV 1. 👎 )

We were helped in our planning by the fact that two routes within Québec’s Route Verte (Green Route) network pass through Ottawa’s extended neighbourhood:

• RV 1 follows the north shore of the Ottawa River from a point about 150 kms west of Ottawa, all the way to the confluence of the Ottawa and St Lawrence Rivers, just west of Montréal.
• RV 2 is a day’s ride north of RV 1, and the section we would follow is the rail trail of le P’tit Train du Nord (the Little Train of the North). Built in the 1890s as part of the Canadian Pacific, it was popular among Montréalers seeking a holiday away from the city. During the 1990s, the railway was dismantled, and its route converted to a linear park.

There is a second rail trail in the region, le Véloroute des Draveurs (Véloroute of the Log Drivers).  This follows the route of the railway between Ottawa and Maniwaki, built in the 1890s.  The Véloroute is less well-known than le P’tit Train do Nord, and the trail itself is more, er, rustic than the latter.

Our route was wholly within the watershed of the Ottawa River.  This is a huge area: the Ottawa is nearly 1300 kms in length, and its watershed covers more than 140,000 sq. kms, twice the size of New Brunswick.  Our route crossed several North-to-South tributaries of the Ottawa: the Gatineau, the Lièvre, the Blanche, the Rouge, and the Petite Nation.  All have rapids and waterfalls, and all were (and to some extent still are) logging rivers, feeding mills in towns and villages along the Ottawa.

The draveurs (log-drivers) did vital and dangerous work.  They are celebrated by the splendid black-and-white photography of Malak Karsh.  And, by Wade Hemsworth’s song “The Log-Driver’s Waltz”.  The voices of the young McGarrigle sisters adorn the animated version, here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Srp7k-9oCkw

Our route thus included gentle terrain, with the rail trails being nearly level, sometimes deceptively so: “Why can’t I manage more than 8th gear where there are no hills??”  The flip side, of course, was rolling along in 12th on apparently level ground, with little effort and no tailwind.

The “connecting tissues”, such as the back-country tertiary roads between RV 1 and 2, were a different matter.  Seeking quieter roads than the secondary highways taking motor traffic to Mont-Tremblant, we found ourselves riding on gravel roads though quiet forests.  One 20-km stretch took us two hours-plus with one steep roller after another.  I used my Rohloff’s 1st gear ten times in that stretch, and 2nd another half-dozen.

Other sections of the back-country roads included fresh loose gravel. And that meant pushing the bikes.  There were also a handful of 12 -14% tarmac sections, and there, the uphills meant a push as well.  Maybe that’s why we saw no cyclists at all near Lac du Castor blanc.  (They’ll never know the tale of a white beaver.) (Mind you, neither do we, despite sweating the hills.)

All these rivers meant some lovely waterside views -- see below.  (We've already used #2, I know, but I like it so much that it reappears.)

Sundry notes on other things to come...

[Andre Jute]

All these rivers meant some lovely waterside views...

Hallelujah!

In my head I hear the dignified rustle of those large rivers.

[RonS]

 The bike-by-waterfalll photo was taken at one of our campsites, situated a short ride off the P’tit train du nord rail trail.  Here are some more pics of the geographic features of the Canadian shield. (water and granite)

1 and 2 by Ron, 3 and 4 by John

[John Saxby]

In praise of dépanneurs

What was Brecht’s phrase? “Before bringing the revolution to its consummation, one must first eat breakfast.” (Less theatrically, my mum used to insist that us kids get a good breakfast.) Welllll, for a cyclist on tour, breakfast is only the start of it.  And, as it turned out, we managed breakfast quite well.  But more on that later.

In our travels between villages and small towns in West Québec, we needed food and drink at all sorts of times and in all sorts of places.  And not only body fuel, but advice, reassurance, and shade too – and, we soon realized, the occasional treat in the form of an unexpected compliment that warmed our hearts.

In rural parts of the RoC (the Rest of Canada), a traveller will find “convenience stores”, as they’re commonly called. These are often attached to gas (petrol) stations.  There’s even a chain of these in Québec, called “Quickies”.  (Readers can entertain themselves with the range of double entendres this name invites.)  But “convenience store” is, well, I dunno, in the realm of wants.  Québec has something firmly lodged in needs, and a bit more poetic to boot: the dépanneur.  If you, your vehicle or whatever, has broken down, it’s en panne.  And, to fix it, you need access to a dépanneur.  Lucky for us, there are dépanneurs all over rural and small-town West Québec.  We used them regularly, usually in mid-late afternoon, to refuel with water, chocolate milk, Gatorade and such.  But also at midday, we found a good variety of prepared sandwiches (usually locally sourced), often warmed up in a microwave.  We also found fresh fruit and cheeses, an array of chocolate bars, and Ron e v e n- t u a l l y  even tracked down some examples of small cakes and pastries he remembered from his youth.  The dépanneur is akin to what we called a “general store”, back in the day.

We didn’t buy any beer or wine, nor lottery tickets, nor any of the various cosmetics or innumerable small items of stationery or hardware.  We were grateful for the cheerful courtesy and personable service shown us by the owners and staff of the dépanneurs we visited, for their patience with our French (and readiness to use English, if need be); and for the compliments we received from both staff and customers.  From time to time, we asked for advice, and it was always helpful, and readily offered.

And, about breakfast and other “sit-down” meals--

We ate well – this was Québec, after all.  Waffles (les gaufres) were definitely a Thing – not so common across the border in Ontario, but very good here.  (See photo #1 below, “Gaufre’n’Go)  In a couple of villages, we had both supper and breakfast at the same restaurants. In the village of Brebeuf, just south of Tremblant, we ate at le Restaurant Villageois – a cheerful and unpretentious place offering good and unpretentious food and beer.  Our next stop, the village of Labelle just west of Tremblant, had a restaurant in the old station of le P’tit Train du Nord.  That offered very good moules et frites (mussels and fries).  Other breakfast staples were pancakes, pain doré (“golden bread” -- not called “French toast”, mind), and a variety of egg dishes.  In the regional town of Mont-Laurier, I had an A-grade late breakfast at “Mike’s”, in a shopping plaza on the main highway:  eggs benedict with lobster and shrimp.  (See photo #2 below.)  Not exactly local, but from Québec nonetheless – check the long coastline.

One Québec institution we didn’t visit was a casse-croûte.  Literally “break-bread” or “crust” (rendered en anglais as “snackbar”), the ones we saw were open between 11 and 7, and on our route, were much less common than dépanneurs.  I had my eye on one on Maniwaki, our overnight stop on our fifth day, with the alluring name of Casse-Croute chez Steffi-Jo.  But as we entered Maniwaki mid-afternoon on Saturday, rolling thunder all-of-a-sudden became more urgent than a visit to chez Steffi-Jo’s.  (Though the lineup there signalled that my instinctive attraction was well-founded.)

Instead, we stopped beneath a spreading maple tree, and Ron, dab hand that he is with a smartphone, found hard accommodation just three minutes ahead:  a motel grafted onto an inn from the 1880s, the Château Logue.  We forfeited our reserved campsite and instead camped in the Château for the night. (See photo #3 below.)  We skipped its bistro for supper—the Saturday night noise level was far beyond what our ears could manage—but we had a first-rate and quiet Sunday breakfast there.

(There’s a tangential footnote here: Because we didn’t eat at a casse-croûte, Ron was unable to reacquaint himself with boyhood memories of poutine.  What’s poutine, you ask?  Nothing to do with a wannabe tsar, but if your arteries are feeling a bit loose’n’squishy-floppy, you may want to read on.  Poutine is served in a small cardboard box, usually about 3” x 4”, and 4” deep.  Into that, vertically, go fries—nice thick crisp ones right out of the fryer; cheddar cheese curds are then stuffed in between them; and hot pork gravy is poured over the lot.  I eat one of these maybe once each winter, usually at a break in skating on the canal – I simply couldn’t manage one in hot weather.  People who know poutine tell me that The Real Stuff may be found only at a chip wagon in the Ottawa Valley, but that may just regional chauvinism.  I heard that a guy from Montréal had opened up a poutine place in Brooklyn, but to me that sounds like a bit of a stretch.)

After we crossed the Ottawa River by ferry at Quyon, we camped at Fitzroy Harbour Provincial Park – our final night was in Ontario.  Ron cooked up an excellent supper with supplies from Quyon’s well-stocked dépanneur.  I had planned to stop for a late breakfast/early lunch at Alice’s Village Restaurant, in the little village of Carp, because—as you might guess—you can get anything you want at Alice’s. Normally, that is -- but not on Mondays or Tuesdays, as we found out on our visit on Tuesday, July 9.

Happily, this section closes with a photo of a tool for recovery, a banana-split milkshake. (Photo #4, below.)  This comes from an unlikely setting: a good breakfast-and-lunch restaurant in a plaza on an ugly arterial road in the further reaches of Ottawa’s western ‘burbs, surrounded by throngs of SUVs and Ford pickups.  We reached the nearby intersection, and Ron, bless ‘im, found the place on his phone.  It was enough to see me home, an hour’s ride away.

[in4]

Fascinating read. I don't think I could handle one of those poutine delights but i'd give a demi-poutine a go!
I get to spend quite a bit of time in Paris these days and love the cuisine and the French dedication to sourcing and eating quality foods. Two of my more recent discoveries have been pate trompette de la mort ( a pate with deathly-looking mushrooms in) and a soft, cow's milk cheese called chaource
(gorgeously soft in the middle). Include a roast pintade ( guinea fowl ) and a glass of wine and I'm in gastronomic heaven ( cardiac arrest to follow lol)

Perhaps many of these Frehch delights have both remained and evolved in Québec. I've yet to take my Nomad through Paris as its a bit intimidating. That said, Paris is peppered with what we might call retro racing bikes; many being ridden by the most stylish of French riders ( male and female) with great aplomb. You get the image: berets, flowing skirts, shades and gauloise cigarettes.

[RonS]

John, your description brought me right back to our trip.

People who know poutine tell me that The Real Stuff may be found only at a chip wagon in the Ottawa Valley, but that may just regional chauvinism. 

Nah. Everyone knows the best poutine comes from Montréal

Fascinating read. I don't think I could handle one of those poutine delights but i'd give a demi-poutine a go!

Ian, its taste surpasses its description.  And I'm sure its caloric and fat content is no worse than a Scottish pie, of which I plan to consume several. 

[John Saxby]

Thanks, Ian, glad you enjoyed our foodie adventures. (Was going to say "culinary", but that implies haute cuisine...)

Tell you what -- come visit, and we'll split a poutine.  I described it once to a friend from Manhattan, very stylish and health-conscious woman, and she said, "John, you're not making this up, are you? It sounds dreadful." "Try it," sez I, and bought her one. I helped her eat it, and she said it was soooo good. (She was Jewish, and decidedly non-observant...)

Reading All This, it may help to know that "The Valley" is not only a geographical/hydrological Thing, it's also a social/cultural creation.  I'm only a recent arrival, from the late '70s; and even at that, live in the big city. And, I have a mid-Atlantic accent, with lingering English vowels and southern African/'Strayan phrases here & there. So, I don't have a deep "investment" in things like poutine, just describing what I see & sometimes taste...

We regularly go across the river for special meals, though. These are often in small villages north of Ottawa. Two favourites are "L'Orée du bois" (The Edge of the Woods) and "Les Fougères (The Ferns). We'll do one of those on your next visit, Ron.

Ian, Québec City is well worth a visit. (Full disclosure:  I have a soft spot for it.  We disembarked there at the end of may, 1956, after sailing up the St Lawrence to a new life in Canada.)  Québec has very good ciders -- wines, er, not so much.  It also has very good cheeses, esp soft ones. (If you want to try the world's best cheddar, however, you have to come to Eastern Ontario. Details on request.) In the old port, at the foot of the cliff, the old customs house has been converted into a cheese shop.  Its counter/cool case is about 30 ft long: of the cheeses there, I recognized maybe 20-25% at most, from the ones on sale in the town of Gatineau, across the river from us.  They offer pairings with various Québec ciders.  Then, Ile d'Orléans in the river produces an array of mustard seeds, hence A-grade condiments. (There's a tragic history here:  that was a disembarkation/quarantine site for the famine ships in the 1850s.)

'Midst all this, there's a-not-very-good Canajan joke:  We were going to have it all: British government, French culture, and American know-how. We ended up with French government, British know-how, and American culture 

Will wrap up the notes from our tour with more refeened comments, I promise

Cheers,  John

[John Saxby]

John’s closing notes on this’n’that

The weather was surprisingly clement.  We never had all of the awkward 4Hs (heat’n’humidity, hills’n’headwinds) at once.  We had three overnight showers in the first half of our tour, none of them a problem.  We would dry out our tents at the next day’s lunch stop – see photo #1 below, ballooning tents catching a brisk westerly off Lac Mercier, just west of Tremblant.  As mentioned above, we also had a brief afternoon shower just north of Maniwaki, and the weather gods held back on the thunderstorms until we had settled in for the night at the Château Logue.

We enjoyed chatting with cyclists at different points along the way.  On our first night, we shared les Berges (The Banks), the site reserved for cyclists in le parc national de Plaisance, with half-a-dozen other cyclists.  We came from different places and generations.  Ron and I were the only ones with Rohloffs, testimony our wisdom and experience (he said, immodestly.)  (The others were intrigued by our Thorns-mit-Rohloffs.)  There was a fellow from Alberta and his lady from Wisconsin, exploring Québec (his birthplace) on their first cycling tour together.  A fellow from Toronto, recently retired in his mid-50s, was cycling to Oka, just west of Montréal.  Unlike the rest of us, Luc was fluently bilingual, borne into a francophone family in Toronto, and raised there.  Interestingly, he knew about Thorn bikes.

When we stopped at Camping parc Joan, just east of Mont-Laurier and the end of our ride along le P’tit Train du Nord, we met other cyclists from the U.S. who had journeyed north (by car and train) to ride its full distance.  Two young women from Chicago were finishing their tour, having started in St-Jérôme; and a man and women from Boston were just beginning theirs.  We were interested to know what had brought them here – turned out that they all had learned about le P’tit Train from the internet, and were keen to visit Montréal.  (No surprise there!)

On the Véloroute des draveurs, just north of Gracefield, we chatted with a woman who had a cottage a little east of Gracefield, near the Gatineau River.  She and her husband, both retired, live near the village of Carp (on our homeward leg) and spend much of their year in their cottage.  She’s a keen cyclist, and was on a 60-70 km day ride to Blue Sea.  We shared a grumble about our fellow cyclists’ evident unfamiliarity with bells, or with vocal signals such as “passing left”.

Lastly, as we expected, we saw several clusters of cyclists on e-bikes.  At our lunch stop in Gracefield, we chatted with a group of four at their turnaround point before they headed north towards Maniwaki.  A couple of them were quite new to cycling; the leader was an experienced cyclist.  They were all enthusiastic about their steeds, and looking forward to more such rides.

The last leg of our tour included a ferry ride south across the Ottawa at Quyon.  (See photos 2 & 3 below.)  It’s always enjoyable, and this time, we learned that the noisy diesel engine of the ferry had been replaced with a sturdy cable and an electric winch.  “Jeez,” sez I to myself, “hope they’ve got a spare in place, ‘cos the river’s 800 metres wide here…”  No fuss or bother, thankfully.

Remarkably, we had only one bad vibe, and this we more or less expected:  We rode the wide shoulders of Highway 117 for about five kms east of Mont-Laurier and another twenty west of town.  117 is the major route from Montréal to Québec’s northwest border with Ontario, and carries a lot of truck traffic.  The noise of engines and tires was no fun at all, but to their credit the drivers were courteous and safe.  They all gave us a wide berth, which was especially welcome first thing in the morning as we left our campsite at parc Joan and laboured up a loooong steep hill in 1st.

And what’s next?

Rethinking touring
I hugely enjoyed our week-plus in Québec – the land- and waterscapes, the variety of terrain, the food, and especially the companionship with Ron.  I learned quite a bit about Freddie’s capabilities as a light-medium touring bike: briefly, very good for a tour like this.  (A few more thoughts on that below.)  I was pleased that I could handle the physical challenges of our ride, even though our days were too full to allow my regular 60-plus minutes of stretching and strengthening exercises.  As I look to the future, though, I’m rethinking touring, looking more towards one- or two-night rides rather than tours of a week or more.  Marcia, bless her, has been very tolerant and supportive of my two-wheeled obsessions, but she and I are well into the latter half of our eighth decade, and although we both enjoy good health ATC (all things considered), I don’t want to leave her alone to manage all the “stuff” of the household for any length of time.

Living in Ottawa, I’m privileged to have all sorts of enjoyable cycling routes and camping spots within a day or two’s ride in all directions.  (For a sampling, have a look at José Albornoz’ website, here: ottawabybike.ca).  Some of these routes include more gravel roads and tracks than my original estimate of 5-10% of Freddie’s likely touring mileage.  So, my rethinking touring leads us into --

Tweaking Freddie
We rode over a fair amount of loose and/or fresh gravel on our tour, especially on the Véloroute des draveurs.  I was impressed with Ron’s evident comfort with the big fat Mondials on Nozomi.  Freddie’s 650B x 1.6 Marathon Supremes were brilliant on tarmac and fine on hard gravel, rather less so on loose gravel and the accompanying threat of sand.  (In addition, I have much less experience with a full touring load on Freddie, than has Ron with his Raven.)

On returning home, and after talking with Ron about his experience, I looked into getting a pair of 650B x 2.00 or 48mm slicks.  A little to my surprise, 2.00 Marathon Supremes were available at a reasonable price – but only from Korea.  Ron suggested 48mm Panaracer Gravelking slicks as a well-made and less expensive alternative to René Herse’s 48mm Switchback Hill tire with an “Endurance” casing.  Happily, I found a pair of Panaracers at a nearby bike shop at an end-of-summer price, the pair costing about as much as a single RH counterpart.  To these I added a pair of Velo Orange smooth alloy 58mm fenders, sourced from a Montréal shop.  So far, I’m very pleased with the result, shown in see Photo 4 below. 

The Panaracers weigh about 600 gms each, some 80gms more than their RH counterpart.  I might “pay” for some of the extra weight by switching out my Thorn alloy seatpost for my spare carbon-fibre Deda Elementi.  Freddie now weighs 30 lbs with rear rack, lights fore and aft and a bell, but no seat or frame bag or water bottles.

(There is a “BUT” to be inserted -- my headache experience installing the Panaracers.  The switchover on the Thorn alloy front wheel was quick and simple, as expected.  Changing the rear tire was unexpectedly prolonged, frustrating and discouraging.  Just switching out the Supreme took me half an hour, instead of two minutes.  After finally removing it, I found that the rear wheel, a Ryde Rival, was set up for tubeless tires, with a U-shaped channel for seating the bead.  This in turn radically restricted the access and leverage of a tire lever.  Mounting the Panaracer took much longer, and only after a more knowledgeable friend recommended that I use liquid detergent did I succeed in easing the bead over the rim and into its channel.  The same friend also recommended getting a Kool-Stop Tire Bead Jack.  That will soon be a part of my toolkit, along with a small bottle of washing-up liquid.  Amidst everything, I wondered whether we could have changed a tube or repaired a puncture on our Québec tour.)

For future overnights and two-day rides, I’ll use my 32-ltr Arkel waterproofs on the rear rack, along with my Revelate frame bag, and at the front, a Revelate Sweetroll and a small Axiom handlebar bag.

Should I do a longer tour in the future, especially one with hills comparable to this one, I’ll consider lowering Freddie’s gearing.  My current setup, with 650B wheels and a 36 x 17 ring and sprocket, gives me a hair less than 16 gear-inches in first gear.  Changing to 34 x 17 would give just over 15 gear-inches in 1st.

All for now, with thanks for your patience   

 

[Danneaux]

What a great summary writeup, John; well told story, guys! Good to see you both again in photos -- pilots looking good and so are the bikes!

Now, please go again so we can read and see more of your adventures.... 

Best, Dan.

[Andre Jute]

+1.

Wonder-full detail.

[John Saxby]

Andre, Dan -- many thanks for your kind words.  Glad you enjoyed our tale 

[RonS]

+1
Next time I'll have John take a more flattering photo of me, though

[John Saxby]

And a little post-ride anecdote:  Ron, you recall we were talking about losing weight (or not) on short tours like ours.

I weighed myself late afternoon on Tuesday after we reached home -- no change from pre-tour.

The following week, I visited my massage therapist for a regular treatment.  I checked my weight before doing so, and I'd lost five pounds. [?!  ]  I mentioned this to my therapist, as part of my check-in and review of our ride.

She laughed and said, "Late-onset weight loss, eh? Nice trick if you can do it -- you might be onto something there, John."