St Lawrence River X-ing

Monster day planned to leave Cabano and cover the 42miles of unpaved, forest trails to Rivière-Du-Loup ferry port for the midday crossing to Saint-Siméon (~1h) then 20miles down to La Malbaie to meet my next WS host, Esther, and her family!

The trail said 42 miles but it was hills and gravel so likely to be 5h... Hence a 6am wake up call to decamp, cycle and ensure I had an hour to find the ferry, buy a ticket and embark. Painful enough but it was only later that I realised I'd crossed a time zone into Quebec and so had got up at 5am - eugh.

Ferry was lovely, although despite sitting in the bar with several others, no staff arrived to dish drinks out. Which actually turned out to be a blessing since the north coast's remaining 20 miles were crammed full of headwinds and leg-destroying hills; truly painful.

However it was all worth it in the end though thanks to a super-warm welcome from Esther et la famille! We had loads of laughs covered a million subjects and it was really lovely to be made to feel so welcome by everyone (despite Esther trying to send me down crazy steep hills with her sight seeing directions en route!).Read more