Author: Paul Rito (Page 12 of 23)

75 miles, 2561 ft of climbing from Campbellton New Brunswick to Val Brilliant.

Beautiful day, nice and warm but not too hot, and all the climbing was that about 1%. I followed the Matapédia River for almost 60 miles. It was like riding a rail trail it was so gradually up. Early morning traffic was light, but if I’m much busier today we’re on with lots of trucks and campers heading in both directions. Later in the afternoon we got off of the main road 132 and we’re on some lovely back roads. Hard to tell the terrain from Pennsylvania except that the majority of the trees here are pine.

Maria, QC to Campbellton, New Brunswick, 53 miles, 2,176 ft of climbing. 7 miles shy of 1,000 for me on this trip. John probably has 3,500 since starting in April.

After some whopper lightning storms last night, the skies cleared this morning and it was another great riding day; but not a lot of pics. Sort of like the Oregon coastline overload I went through last year. Lots of little coves with picturesque little towns are 5 miles apart and if you want some examples, look back in the blog. There will likely be more when we cross the St. Lawrence on Wednesday.

We took the day off today. There were thunderstorms all along our route today and some pretty impressive lighting displays along the bay in front of us. Charles was kind enough to let us invade his space for two days and even lent us his car to go to dinner (fresh and locally sourced salmon linguine for me and cod for John). Good day to chill out and Sunday looks dry for the most part with just a chance of light rain. I did get a whole two miles in riding for coffee this morning, and spent some time lubing and adjusting brakes on P. H.

Woke up to the sounds of ducks, and a number of unknown bird calls, and the shadows of the trees from the early rising sun on the teepee walls. I took an early morning walk around the grounds — the ice skating pond, the glider by the ocean, the private boardwalk — and watched the northern gannets and cormorants on their early morning fishing runs (the gannets tactics are to go up high and dive bomb their prey). We joined Anne for coffee and breakfast while Gui was out on his pre-kayaking bike ride. She recommended Richard Power’s book The Overstory about the connection between people and trees. It’s on my list for the fall. Did I mention Gui was a Phys Ed teacher and has a full gym in one of the buildings “on campus”? He joined us after the ride and we continued our conversations from the night before about touring, longevity and staying in shape and, of course, our two countries approaches to health care and education.

53 miles, 2,037 ft of climbing. Grande Riviera to New Carlisle.

It was a beautiful day for a ride, and today was short by our recent standards, so we took our time. Some headwinds to deal with through the last half, but John and I have synced up enough to know when we need to switch leads to save our energy.

The highlight of the day was arriving at our warm showers hosts’. There is a whole family complex, and two houses that were built from railroad cabooses.

Fearing another rain out according to the weatherman, we got up at 6 and were out of our hostel by 7. We had around 56 miles to do today, depending on which way we went, and rain was supposed to start around 11. We took one last look at the radar and headed out. Suffice to say it never rained on us all day .

We left Gaspé on a great trail that took us around the edge of the bay. It ran along an old train track, and just when our GPS was telling us to turn right, the Route Verte 1 sign said go left. So we did as that’s our preferred route. It led us to a causeway which was shown as connected on our map. As we got closer to the railroad bridge up ahead, the path got sandy and it was hard to control the bikes. Add in that there were car barriers just like the ones on the trail we had been following and we were pretty certain we were still on route.

A perfect weather night, warm and breezy and didn’t require getting into the sleeping bag. The sunset was cloud covered but still pretty nice. John reported having trouble getting to sleep in the campground and I concurred. Our plan was to get up at 5 and on the road at 6, and we were actually on the bike at 6:20, so not too bad. Today was as the title says, lots of rolling hills and lots of climbs.

Lots. And while the weather was nice and the winds light, it was again a lot of climbing in full sun. We were both tired enough when we got to Rivière-au-Renard-Ouest, we changed our route to take the shortest way to Gaspé which also, we duly noted, was one long gradual climb compared to the 11%-13% grades we were navigation

68.4 miles, 4556 ft of climbing. Whew. It was our first day of serious climbing. The main climb was 3.5 miles and much of that at 13%. But it was a good prep for what’s to come. We’re tired, but it was a glorious ride.

We left Samantha’s (oh yeah, she’s also a classical pianist!) at about 9 am as the rain ended earlier than expected. We had a big day to Grand Vallée and the best part was that was the end of the rain for today and tomorrow.

The first half of the ride was a mix of dense fog and clear skies with sun. We had a tailwind, up until we got to a town and a cove. Getting out of the cove was always into a headwind, but that was much shorter compared to the stretch between towns with that lovely tailwind.

Nice quiet rest after gorging ourselves on a half of an IGA roasted chicken each, potato salad, and Pilsner, and donuts for dessert. A nice touring side benefit: calories don’t need to be counted, only consumed. It’s a lot of work hauling your own butt and the bike and bags. I’ve already lost 10 lbs and will probably lose 20 before I’m done.

We got up at 4:45 to take advantage of both the early sunrises here and to get to Sainte-Anne-des-Mont (yes, finally a woman saint!) before the rains we’re to hit. We were on the road by 6 am. 57 miles today and 2700 ft of climbing with a light headwind that got stronger as the day went on. 3 pm was the projected time for the thunderstorms to hit, but its 4:17 now and no rain yet.

Before we went to bed last night we asked Tristan if it would be possible to stay another day if the promised thunderstorms materialized and he said, “Sure!” They did materialize and we woke up at 6:00 to check the radar and see if we had a chance of moving on today. We had a window from 8 to 11 and decided that we’d head to the next town where we would re-evaluate.