The day throws all it can at us to stop us getting to Sainte Gabriel

“What are people like you doing in a place like this?”

Neil and I exchange a look. We’re in what would appear to be the nicest restaurant in town. It is packed with people. We’ve just had a fairly nice meal, with great service from our English-speaking waiter. It’s late, and we are about to head to tonight’s home for sleep.

I can see what she means. And it is like today has thrown everything it can at us to stop us from being here.

First the head winds. For the first 26km out of Trois Rivières we are buffetted by immense winds. We form a little group of two to protect ourselves; one riding in front taking the brunt of it and the other having a cruise along behind. If you have ever doubted the power of drafting, let me tell you that Neil was up on his pedals putting everything into a downhill and still only managing 13km/h, while I sat there on his tail, occasionally braking to avoid ramming him. And yes, I took my turn in the lead. Fair’s fair.

We stop after 26km in a town called Yamachiche. In an area of saint-named places, this town name has its origins from the native American, rather than the French. We hunt for food, and think we will have to settle for brown food from t Casse-Croute, and then stumble on a little cafe that has more vegetarian food than not.

We share a table and chat with a couple from Montreal – Eric and Chantelle. They are about our age, and enjoying their two-week summer break. The conversation follows a lot of conversations we’ve had lately – the weather (they horrify us with all kinds of minus-something temperatures and then we couner with all manner of plus-something temperatures), travel (what we are doing) and then, like almost everybody else we’ve met, they tell us they have a cottage in the north, which is where they are headed. It turns out we are going into cottage country today.

Too soon we are back on the road, and turning away from our friend Chemin du Roy and striking out on our own. We know there are hills coming. From the 40km mark there is a steady 25km uphill pull. On paper it doesn’t look too bad as it averages out at about 1%. You should be able to do that all day, right?

Luckily the wind is gone, but the day is not done with us. Before we even hit the climb proper there are a few short sharp hills, which by now you must know are not my favourite. And then we hit gravel. It is loose blue stone gravel and extremely hard to ride on. We pedal along gingerly, but luckily this section is fairly short – maybe only a kilometre or two before we are back and smooth(ish) tar. We’re on some second-rate roads now. Canada must have a massive summer project fixing all the roads that have cracked during the winter. There must not be time and budget to get to all the roads, and this road is one that has not had attention. It’s a little bumpy, and takes some concentration to ride, but OK.

And then it tilts up. Most of the time, yes, it is a 1% kind of road, with occasional sharp climbs. We are going along OK, until about the 55km mark, we we come to an intersection. One way is “cul-de-sac” (dead end – there’s a lot of them around here) and the other way is gravel. And really nasty, soft, sandy, unpleasant gravel. Neil hates the downhills on this surface, and powers uphill. I am the opposite. I find it such hard work that I walk a lot of the uphills.

And then there are the beasties. Little nasty biting flies that descend on me. They can fly faster than I can ride, definitely faster than I can walk, and they are making a meal of me.

Fortunately the gravel section finishes. It must have lasted a good 5km, and probably half and hour or more. We are into the last 15 or so kilometres of the ride, and I am pretty much done. It is a sad and pathetic ride into Sainte Gabriel, and I limp up to the little resto pub I’d booked for the night. The pictures I’d seen of this place showed fairly basic rooms (like you would see in a Victorian country pub) but there was a bar, a deck, with happy people sitting in the sun.

This place is dead. We have to ring a bell to get somebody to come, and he leads us into the ghost of a pub, where he apparently now runs a travel agency. It takes ages to check us in. He does not speak much English, but has much to say, and we work together to try to figure it all out. I want him to stop. I am feeling parched, and faint, and I just want a drink and a lie down. Our bikes go into the empty bar area, we go upstairs to our room.

This place is weird. There is a confessional next to our room, with a sign stating hours you can go to confess. I think it is serious for a while, but after we find the barber’s chair in another public area we realise it is a joke, or just part of some less than tasteful decor.

We shower quickly and head out for a drink. The only place is the bogan bar next door, where the bar tender apologises that she doesn’t have Molsen. Budweiser it is. After a week or more of craft beer in all places we’ve beeen, we descend from our snobby heights to the place where a Bud tastes good. It has been that kind of day.

Luckily there is a decent restaurant nearby, and we luck out with a waiter who speaks great English. We are a little too tired to deal with French today. His name is Nick, and he tells us he has a girlfriend from Brisbane.

It is she who asks us what we are doing here. It turns out she works at the restaurant as well. We chat with her a while as we are leaving. She’s been in Canada for around seven years, here with Nick for several of those years. She has learned to speak French, and honestly, if I met her without introduction, I would not pick her as Australian.

Sainte Gabriel was a point on a map, an appropriate distance between two points for an overnight stop, and had the basics – somewhere to sleep and somewhere to eat. There was no overwhelming compelling reason to stay here.

I think as we head back to our hotel, “Redrum” whispering in my ear, that I could well ask her the same. I don’t think I could ever love anybody enough to live here.

Stats for today:

• Distance: 80.7km
• Climb: 463m
• Average speed: 16.2km/h
• Average temperature: 24C
• Moving time: 4:58:24
• See our ride on Strava

The beer picture

At the end of a day’s ride, our tradition is to enjoy a beer, and to photograph it for posterity. Today’s beer picture was taken at a bogan-sih bar next to our hotel in Sainte Gabriel.

Along the way today: