To set the tone, we had a marvelous day; despite eating
breakfast in a fast food place. The
restaurant where we ate dinner was declared off limits by Jeff so we went to
Tim Hortons. After that we left town and
cycled on a paved trail for 6 miles before our GPS
told us to get back on the route 132. Before
doing so, a jogger stopped HP and told him that route 132 ahead had some
sections that were dangerous and he suggested a short cut.
Our ride quickly got very interesting. The short cut dumped
us onto a very sandy road that prohibited us from cycling. This lead us to an
abandoned railroad bridge which we had to cross. Along the earlier bike path we saw signs
warning of the dangers of touching a certain plant that was worse than poison
ivy. And now we were up to our knees in
weeds. After the railroad bridge, we had
more sand (and weeds), which again required us to push our bikes. We felt like hobos but taking this 2 mile
short cut saved us 9 miles of questionable highway cycling. After that we were back on route 132 and had
some reasonable climbs with nice shoulders.
HP next spotted a county club that advertised a restaurant
that was serving breakfast. Yes, HP was
today’s hero! A second breakfast was in
order and nicely prepared. The folks
there were so nice they even had us park our bikes in the lobby so they would
be safe. Those Canadian golfers must be
a bad lot.
Our day continued with rolling (but gentle) hills until we
got to another possible short cut across the bay. We crossed one railroad bridge, why not
another. Perhaps, the why not related to
it being an active right-of-way? So we stayed on the highway. Just before we
were to start our big climb up and over the mountain to Perce, we saw a cycle
route sign that bypassed the highway.
This was one short cut that we should have avoided. The path went thru the Malbaie Salt
Marsh. In many sections the asphalt was
washed away by the tide and in some place replaced by loose grave that was so
deep that it was even difficult to push our bikes. We could not believe that this was a marked
cycle route.
Once on the other side of the salt marsh we started to
climb. We were told that this climb
would be very difficult but after the past several days of climbing, we thought
that it was not as bad as described. At
the top of the mountain we stopped at a café and celebrated with some locally
brewed beer (only 1 each) and then dropped down into town on a 17% decline
(yes, it was steep and fast).
Perce, is a tourist town and we had to navigate around a
multitude of people to get to our hotel.
We have lots of options for dinner and will be out as soon as we get
cleaned up.
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