74 km, 4 hours
Quebec to Montmangy
It was a delightful day to ride and we are feeling strong. We started off slowly, making our way through the cycle paths of Quebec City to the old city, where we stopped for a wonderful exotic lunch (Scott ordered the Tilapia, I ordered the duo of sausages with couscous). Both were delicious.
My appetite kicked into high gear yesterday and hasn’t stopped. I seem to be eating like someone who is cycling for 5+ hours a day! I also took iron this morning, realizing that the last few days I’ve had a slight sore throat and for me that is a sign that I need to be taking an iron supplement. I just need to learn to remember on the initial onset of the sore throat rather than 2 days later, d’oh!
We took the ferry across from Quebec City to Levis. It was neat, in that 50% of the car deck was allocated to bicycle racks. The boat had maybe 6 cars on it, but at least 40 bicycles! It certain was a more pleasant way to cross than riding over a large bridge.
After crossing the climb out of Levis was also quite nice. The path had a grade of about 2-3% most of the time, so it was a pleasant ride.
We are staying at an RV park again tonight. It is a nice municipal camp ground, and they had a special price for touring cyclists. It is only $16 a night – our cheapest pay-camping so far. We set up right in the middle of the field (near the cooking shelter), so we felt like all eyes were on us throughout the evening. Once it got dark we realized we’d set the tent up right underneath the light .. Oops .. I slid it back a bit to be in the shade of a tree.
Scott says:
The bike path along Blvd Champlain was surprisingly busy for a weekday morning – it was crowded enough that we had trouble passing people at times, which was great to see! Lots of cyclists, inline skaters and pedestrians. Our lunch was on Rue du Petit-Champlain, below the old city. It’s a lovely little pedestrian street with lots of touristy shops (and tourists), and had a good lunch as well as got to people-watch. Lots of people intrigued with our bikes, which were parked across the street, but in view. I didn’t get any pictures of the people taking pictures of our loaded touring bikes, but there were a few. I did get a chance to play with light and colour in some of my pictures during lunch, which was amusing. Some of the pictures don’t look half bad – at least by my standards. Our break for lunch was after only about 10km, so I was worried we wouldn’t get anywhere today, but I tried not to worry about it, and after lunch we made good time to Montagny. The bike path in Levis was nice, and since it was on an old rail line, quite flat – the tailwind helped too.