Clean Bin Project Tour Day 93 - Quebec to New Brunswick

 

To be honest, Grant and I were scared of the rest of Quebec.  Grant's french is non-existant and mine was left firmly back in highschool where it garnered me my lowest final grade on my entire transcript. Luckily, the cycle routes are well marked across the province, and the words for poutine and croissant are the same in English. I listened feavorishly to Michel Thomas teach French lessons as we rode, and in the end, Quebec surprised us.

I really can't say enough about the cycling.  The Route verte comprises of 4000kms of cycle trails, paths, and lanes all over Quebec (we obviously did just a small part). The churches were gorgeous, the waterfront towns were lovely, and the people were really friendly. Case in point - one blazing hot day, a man pulled chairs inside his air conditioned convenience store and insisted we sit inside to eat the lunch we had packed.

Then, just as I was starting to regain my French basics, we made it to New Brunswick. Here, the trail continued for awhile as a gravel railbed and the weather got ridiculously hot. So hot, our forearms sweated as we rode, and lunchtime turned into "search for air conditioning time" because even sitting in the shade felt like we were sitting under a laundry dryer vent.

We took the scenic route along the river for a couple days and ended up on a road that said "cul-de-sac" on the sign but which our trusty GPS clearly showed as a through road.  The road itself was, at first, lovely and shady, with trees growing right up to its edges and overhanging the asphalt, but as we progressed, it grew increasingly overgrown.  Grant commented that it looked almost postapocolyptic, like something out of a Cormac Macarthy novel.  And then the road ended.

And that's how we ended up in the photo, shin deep in water and giving our waterproof paniers a test.

(Bone dry, by the way.)