Thursday September 3, 2015

A lovely start to the ride today along the Canal du Soulanges. This canal was built in 1898 as a waterway to go around the St. Lawrence rapids and also to negotiate a 26 metre rise in elevation. It is now in disrepair, the bicycle route is great, but the canal could be a great waterway for small craft similar to what is used in England on the canal system. There was a power generating plant on the canal, it was used to power the lights along the path and also for the small villages that were along the canal.

The path was a lovely quiet path, well used by locals and tourists alike.

The local municipalities have \”flags\” that have been painted by local artists, with a space at the bottom for sponsors.  A great way to maintain funding for the bike path.

At the end of the path in Pointes des Cascades there was a nice park, with information about the various ships and the canal.

What a great way to start our cycling in Quebec.

It seemed to take us forever to get into Montreal. I think we were looking for the address to the hostel way before we really needed to. We were still 20 kms out of the downtown when we thought we were closer to the hostel and started to check out the directions on Garmin.  Ralf was concentrating on getting us to the hostel, and didn\’t take anymore photos.  There were some nice neighbourhoods we went through along the river, there were also some rougher neighbourhoods as we got closer to Montreal.

We eventually picked up a map of Quebec and found our way around the mess of highways going into Montreal. We followed the St. Lawrence River for a long while before making the left turn to negotiate the streets of Montreal. Montreal is renowned for having potholes! When I warned Ralf of an upcoming hole, he said “Tell me when there is a flat piece of asphalt, I will aim for that”. The roads were appalling, it was quite dangerous. Although the roads we were cycling on were relatively quiet, you had to maneuver around the rough section of the roads by going further into the lane of traffic than we would normally. Thankfully, the Montreal drivers were surprisingly patient and stayed behind us as we weaved along the streets trying to avoid the potholes.

Arrived at hostel at 4:30 p,m! We settled into the hostel and then went out to get some provisions for dinner. We are two blocks from St. Catherine Street, which is one of the main shopping areas in Montreal. I had to keep Ralf focused on getting to the grocery store as he was really enjoying the atmosphere of this multi-cultural City. Tomorrow we will have time to people watch and window shop.