Scott and Becky go East

60.4 km in 4h25

We made it to Quebec City, or at least to the suburbs after a relaxing morning in the campsite. Becky spent some time writing, and I read and relaxed. This meant we didn’t get a very early start, we began riding shortly after 11 am.

As we approached Quebec the hills increased. We had noticed the introduction of a few hills yesterday about 10km outside of Portneuf. Totally was mostly hilly with a couple pretty brutal hills. One was at least a 15% grade (shortly after it hit 15% Becky started walking her bike and was no longer moving fast enough for her GPS to register the grade). This made for some beautiful vistas across the St. Lawrence. The light wasn’t great, so I didn’t stop to take pictures, which I now regret. I need to remember the saying “the best pictures are the ones you actually take”.

We only stopped briefly for lunch (hummus and pita for Scott, bagel and almond butter for Becky), but it started to rain (mostly just spitting). It is unpleasant to sit in the rain, so we got back on our bikes and rode. It didn’t rain for long, and only spat a couple more times during the day. Not enough to worry about getting wet or putting on wet weather gear.

By the time we reached the Quebec City suburbs, we were both beat, although Becky admitted it more readily than I did. We stopped in Cap Rouge below the long rail trestle for a second lunch and rest, before tackling the monster climb up Chemin Ste. Foy.

More French is coming back to us, and we are able to function most of the time in broken French, although we do need to regress to English now and then. By the time we reached the Info Centre at the Pont Pierre Laporte (across the St. Lawrence), we were tired enough that our French was pretty limited, but Becky managed to get us a lovely (and inexpensive) room in a nearby B&B with a combination of French and English. Our bikes are settled in the garage for the night, and we have a large, quiet room.

	Partdistance	Parttime	Partspeed	Distance	Time	Speed
	0.000 km	0s	-	0.000 km	0s	-
	10.032 km	40m 08s	15.00 km/h	10.032 km	40m 08s	15.00 km/h
	9.994 km	48m 54s	12.26 km/h	20.026 km	1h 29m 02s	13.50 km/h
	9.983 km	1h 09m 55s	8.57 km/h	30.009 km	2h 38m 57s	11.33 km/h
	10.002 km	47m 19s	12.68 km/h	40.011 km	3h 26m 16s	11.64 km/h
	10.004 km	1h 01m 56s	9.69 km/h	50.015 km	4h 28m 12s	11.19 km/h
	9.383 km	2h 32m 53s	3.68 km/h	59.398 km	7h 01m 05s	8.46 km/h

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 8:45 pm and is filed under Canada, Journal, Quebec, Visited Places. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.