Montreal and Véloroute Gourmande – Day 8

Breakfast was included with our hotel last night. We met at 7:30 in the dining area. We were ready to go just before 9.

Our hotel was at the intersection of a highway and a busy road. My planned route took us over the highway twice so I looked at the map more closely, and saw a way we could get to Vélo Route 4 on low traffic volume roads without crossing the highway. We spent a lovely 10 km on a road that ran along the Saint François river. 

There was a significant headwind today when we were on unsheltered roads. Fortunately it was extremely flat with only two small climbs. We saw some lovely homes and had some glimpses of the river.

We left the road briefly and rode through this perfect autumn forest. That’s an asphalt path under all those leaves.

Vélo Route 4 runs through Parc régional de la Forêt-Drummond. It is a beautiful park. We saw very few other people.

We stopped briefly at this rest area in the park.

After the park Vélo Route 4 followed a country road with no cars, lovely homes, and beautiful fall foliage.

Unfortunately we came upon this road closed sign. We looked at the map and talked for a while and decided to follow the detour since within the 2.3 km there were a couple bridges. We can often sneak around detours on our bikes, but not when a bridge over a river has been removed. So we decided it was safest to follow the detour.

I think we’ve hit peak autumn colour for this area.

This area seems less prosperous than where we have been for the last few days. We passed several closed restaurants and abandoned homes.

There wasn’t a lot of choice for lunch, but we were pleased with what we chose: Restaurant Comme Chez Soi, in Saint-François-du-Lac. It was one of our more reasonably priced lunches and included soup to begin and pie for dessert.

After lunch, we had about 10 km on a busy road, but the traffic wasn’t constant, and most of the drivers gave us the required 1.5 m passing distance.

Then we joined  Vélo Route 3 which took us all the way to Sorel-Tracy on the St Lawrence. 

We made use of the pump where we joined the route. 

The route is paved the whole way from where we joined to Sorel-Tracy. The fall foliage, wind protection, and high quality infrastructure made the kilometres fly by.

We saw intersecting trails in a couple of spots.

In Sorel-Tracy we passed a parking lots full of St Hubert’s deliver cars with their distinctive chicken comb on the roof.

We had cycling infrastructure all the way to the ferry cyclists’ waiting area.

There are no bridge crossing of the St. Lawrence River between Montreal and Trois Rivière, a distance of over 130 km.  There is a ferry Sorel-Tracy to St-Ignace de Loyola which we used since network accommodation is on the north side of the river in Berthierville. 

The ferry runs hourly on the half hour from the southside and hourly on the hour from the north. We arrived 40 minutes early. 

We were getting quite chilly by the time the fairy arrived. The crossing took less time than the disembarking and boarding.

It’s quite a large ferry with only a small number of seats indoors. I would assume most people remain on their cars.

This is a steel forging plant in Sorel-Tracy.

There was a ship anchored near the plant. 

There was no cycling infrastructure on the north side, leaving the ferry. Traffic was heavy and noisy for the 1st km or so. We were the first ones off the ferry, but it didn’t take long for the cars and trucks to pass us. We did have a decent shoulder.

After 80 km we arrived at our hotel, Days Inn, in Berthierville. It is nicely decorated, which, with lots of colourful art. They have bike racks outdoors, and small bike stands that they could provide for the rooms, if we didn’t want to lean our bikes against the wall.

We cleaned up and then walked across the street to a tie restaurant for dinner.

After dinner, we had a drink in the bar in the hotel and then headed to our  rooms. Somehow, the first eight days of this trip have flown by. Tomorrow is the final day of the self supported part of our trip, and then we will have two more days in Montreal before driving home.