Day 4

Sherbrooke to Victoriaville (71 miles)

Thursday and Friday were the longest days of the tour, about seventy-one miles each, but also fairly flat, with wide expanses of farm country, and the skies and rain cleared up. The last two days have blurred together in my mind a bit, but I’ll try to sort out my memories.

For much of the way we were roughly following La Route Verte, but riding on country highways instead, because the folks in the fast group wanted to hammer, and I decided to try to hang on. Some parts of the Route Verte trail were gravel paths, too rough to ride fast, but on some stretches of the highway where traffic was too fast and unfriendly, we took refuge on the trail.

Leaving Sherbrooke, the CycleCanada tour route passed through a suburban neighborhood, and was supposed to lead to a bike path out of town, but the trail access was blocked by construction and we zigzagged around local streets until a friendly resident gave us directions.

Around thirty miles into the day, possibly near the town of Richmond (but I may be wrong) we came to another obstacle, orange barriers and piles of dirt where there should have been a bridge. There were no advance warnings of a detour, no sign of how far it would take us out of our way, or how to get back on route. After exploring a bit, someone discovered a small improvised foot-bridge crossing the river from one house to another on the other side. While we debated trying the detour versus trampling through the mud and trespassing through someone’s front yard to the rickety bridge, the tour leader phoned his assistant for information, and others searched their smart phones. At last the homeowner drove up and graciously guided us across his lawn to the footbridge, to set us on the road again.

We had lunch in Kingsley Falls (I think), about forty-three miles along. There was a paper mill in the town, I recall, and the restaurant had an intriguing steampunkish, elegant-biker-bar atmosphere: old masters paintings in gilded frames and heavy, fringed brocade curtains held back in brackets decorated with old monkey wrenches and ball hammers. The food was good, but it turned out they close early in the afternoon. We’d arrived in time, but they locked the doors behind us as we left, just as the people from the sight-seeing group arrived. So they had to try to find lunch somewhere else.

After our meal we came to some long, straight stretches of road, with good bike lanes, passing by dairies and fields of corn or wheat. It was here that the fast group decided to put the hammer down. Part of the time I held on and drafted behind them, going about 17-20mph for at least an hour. I get fired up after riding fast for a while and held on pretty well, but I am used to riding alone and get nervous following too close, especially with riders whose habits I don’t know well. Sometimes two of the others from the middling group would drop behind, and then I’d slow down and end up riding between the two groups, trying to keep everyone in sight, ahead and behind. Still, it was fun skimming along past the cows and green fields, and the long day went fast despite the road blocks and detours.