Back at the beginning of June I completed my first long distance trip, 380km in Quebec from Mont-Tremblant to Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre over 4.5 days

I don’t have a car, and earlier in the year, slimlined all my belongings down to basically whatever I can carry in a backpack and my panniers for the smart idea of moving across the province by bike, laptop and all..

I travelled from Saint-Donat -> Foret-Ouareau -> Mandeville -> Shawinigan -> Riviere-a-Pierre and finally to Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre. The route was predominantly paved roads, with some intermittent gravel shortcuts or extras when leading off to campsites. The exception being the last day, where I followed the Velopiste-Jacques-Cartier gravel track from Riviere-A-Pierre for it’s 60km duration, before continuing onto Quebec City.

I had planned to take lots of photos, however, the weather was either rainy or way too hot for me to want to stop, and so unfortunately I only ended up pulling out my camera at Foret-Ouareau, and then not again for a few days until I was around Portneuf area and beyond.

Prior to setting off, I had bought a bike and been cycling since the end of April, and been doing regular rides throughout May to get to hiking spots. My longest prep rides on the week before setting off were only 40km, although I had been putting in more elevation work than distance work on those rides.

On my second to last day (which was supposed to be both the longest and highest elevation), my body was not feeling particularly up to the planned elevation, but I was luckily able to find a taxi company at a town along my planned route for the day and shamelessly only did a couple of hours of riding to get there, skipped the section with the highest elevation, and did a final hour of riding through Portneuf to reach my campsite.

However on my final day, which had planned to be just 88km to Quebec City, where I’d catch the ferry to my destination (60km planned on gravel, then rest on paved bike path). Final morning was unexpectedly chilly, had dropped to -3 overnight and when I was packing up at 5am, there was a big layer of frost over all my gear. Was hoping the gravel section would feel easy, as compared to every other day, the final day had much less elevation and more forgiving grades. My pace didn’t end up being any different than the previous days, and so took just over 4 hours. Felt pretty shitty throughout the section, was really craving a mcdonalds. I stopped for one about 10km after leaving the gravel trail, knowing I only had to do another 1-1.5 hours of riding.

After I ate the maccies though, I was feeling superhuman. Said fuck the ferry, I’m doing the whole thing, and so ended up cycling much farther than any previous days, 130km total, over 8 hours (moving time).

Definitely sore for a few days after, but a lot of fun. Would definitely recommend the areas around Saint-Donat->Foret-Ouareau and Portneuf for shorter cycling trips. The between days were interesting and took me from forest and mountains to very lush rolling agriculture, but towards the middle it was definitely much less remote than I prefer.