We’re cycling around the Gaspésie Peninsula, the Eastern-most part of Quebec. It’s about 900km and we’ve been promised terrible weather, many hills, and excellent craft beer.
Day 7: Coin du Banc to Pabos
62.5km, 600m ascent
There comes a point in every long bike ride when you start entertaining the idea of a bit of blood doping. For us, this point was day 7.
The day began with a steep but beautiful climb out of Coin du Banc, weaving through striking red rock cliffs. It was this climb that prompted Steph to start day dreaming about EPO. Sadly, all we had was Dairy Milk.
On the other side of the mountain was the beautiful seaside town of Percé, so named for a big rock which has a hole in it (it’s Percéed, so to speak). The lighting wasn’t ideal for photos, so here’s a professional’s effort:
We had a nice time chewing on croissants, reading our books, and gazing out to sea in the sunshine.
We could afford to take our time because the rest of the day’s cycling was pretty straightforward. In fact, it was flat as a pancake, as acted out by my charming assistant:
This was lucky, because about 30 minutes after leaving Percé we came across the very microbrewery whose beers we’d been enjoying throughout the trip, Pit Caribou. Naturally, we had to stop for a beer and another swim.
We continued along the coast rather sanguinely until the heavens opened, and we took shelter at a cantine where Steph ate a colossal quantity of food.
The weather stabilized in the evening, and we reached our campsite at about 4pm in glorious sunshine. This was the first sustained warmth we’d had since the trip began, so we spread out all of our belongings on the grass and then joined them.
As evening gathered we nipped into the nearby town of Chandler to do some shopping. The next 2 days were to be spent in the backcountry, so we stocked up on grub. We also managed to find a 375ml plastic bottle of Canadian Club whisky, which was a cause for great celebration because we couldn’t really afford the weight of any beer on the next leg of our trip.
We returned to the campsite to cook sweet potatoes in the fire. Thus ensued a languid evening during which we didn’t study the route for the next day.
This was an error.
Day 8: Pabos to Middle of Nowhere
65km, 1260m ascent
In my planning, I had cheerfully named the destination for Day 8 “the middle of nowhere”. This turned out to be much truer than we’d appreciated.
The day was already scorching by 9am, but we set off in high spirits, carrying what we thought was an insane amount of snacks. The ride got off to a slightly dodgy start when I realized that my planned route actually started 10km away, so we had a bit more to do than anticipated.
After a few km, we hit a road barrier which signified the end of the paved road. Things were still pretty smooth – compacted gravel – so this didn’t cause us undue concern.
However, things rapidly worsened. As a helpfully placed map soon informed us, we weren’t travelling on gravel roads, as we’d anticipated, but on trails intended for snowmobiles and ATVs. You know, things with massive fucking tyres.
Thus commenced a fairly intense morning of steep ascent punctuated with lots of rolling hills, all on a mixture of rubble and mud. It was manageable for me on a gravel bike with 35mm tyres but pretty sketchy for Steph on a carbon road bike with only 25mm of rubber on the road. There was some walking. A bit of swearing. And so much sweating.
The landscape was beautiful in places, and it felt great to be off the beaten track (although arguably we would have appreciated a bit more beating of this track). The side of the track was fringed with trees and berry bushes which looked like reassuringly tasty alternatives to a couple of increasingly lean bikers for any neighbourhood bears.
These turned out to be some of the best roads we’d experience in the next 24 hours.
As the sun reached its zenith, we finally crested the first of the two big hills of the day and started the descent towards the river where we intended to eat lunch. With the increase in steepness came a degradation in surface. The technical term for riding a skinny-tyred bike on unsuitable terrain is “underbiking”. Steph had been doing this all morning, but I joined her as the terrain worsened. If I was now underbiking, Steph was now in the classification beyond underbiking, which I think is called “making a mistake”.
We’d drunk all of our water, which was beginning to make us feel little edgy. As we bounced our way down the track, I caught glimpses of what looked like a dry riverbed below us. Whilst half of my brain focused on not getting killed, the other half started wondering what it would like to be stranded 40km from civilization with no water, and words like “rescue”, “emergency”, and “phone coverage” started bouncing around inside my head.
I was therefore pretty relieved when we came across some water. It might have been described as a “waterfall” but perhaps more accurately deemed a “waterdribble”. We weren’t bothered, and happily filled up every receptacle we had.
As it turned out, we needn’t have bothered, because when we did get down to the river, it was nothing short of paradisiacal.
After a couple of swims and a big lunch, we steeled ourselves for the afternoon’s riding.
Given the scarcity of water, we knew we had to reach our destination (another river) to be sure of resupply, but the difficulty of the terrain meant we had to walk much of the afternoon. It didn’t take as long as we’d feared, however, and we reached our campsite before sunset.
The remoteness also paid off – I met a moose around 5pm. I was daydreaming about machine learning and whistling Abba and he was enjoying his tea. Each of us looked at each other in puzzlement for a few seconds – I was thinking “that’s a funny looking horse”, and he was probably thinking “mate you could do with a hardtail or perhaps even a full suspension rig on this kind of terrain” – before he galloped off down the hill.
The only people we saw on the trail were occasional ATVs. There were signs of life, however – mostly signs advertising hides for hunting. We saw promises of orignal (moose), chevreux (goats), and cerf (deer), but no mention of ours (bears), which was reassuring.
We found a place to pitch right on the river, and settled down to enjoy our Canadian Club. As the sun set, the iron bridge over the river gently ticked as it cooled down. We slept well.
Day 9: Middle of Nowhere to Murdochville Gaspé
~80km, ~1200m ascent [Komoot lost us for a while]
We spent a lovely early morning fortifying ourselves with croissants and coffee for what we knew would be a gruelling day ahead. There might have been a dram of whisky consumed too.
Shortly after commencing, we sustained our first puncture of the trip.
We felt a little aggrieved at this, because the roads were actually considerably better than the day before. It was a “pinch puncture” – caused by the inner tube getting pinched by the rim of the wheel. This is usually caused by insufficient tyre pressure on rocky terrain.
We replaced the tube, whilst coming to terms with the fact that the puncture repair kit we’d bought from Canadian Tyre didn’t look like it could patch a mosquito bite. We had 2 spare tubes for Steph’s bike and one for mine, so we were still fairly relaxed.
Shortly afterwards, however, we met a couple of guys on an ATV, who told us that the way ahead was blocked by landslide and was impossible to cross. This was a potentially big issue because, as I think I’ve mentioned, we were in the middle of bloody nowhere.
We talked through our options with them. The nearest town was Gaspé, which they reckoned to be about 50km away. They offered us some water and then grimly wished us best of luck. We continued to investigate the landslide. They hadn’t been exaggerating.
The landscape having firmly rejected our choice of destination, we turned around and headed back to Gaspé.
This wasn’t an entirely trivial undertaking, however. The trails were once again vicious, and after 10km, Steph sustained another puncture.
This was again a pinch, which probably resulted from insufficient pumping in the last repair, thus contributing a dose of self-loathing to an already frothy cocktail of fatigue, exasperation, and uncertainty. We duly replaced the tube, pumped until our forearms bulged, and took stock of our supplies.
We had stuff for lunch, but no other meals, having anticipated being in town by nightfall. However, thanks to our snack stockpiling, we had about 3000kcal of food left (~1000 of these were from cheese curds, a Quebecois delicacy to which Steph has become very attached). We reasoned that this should probably see us through the night if we did get into further trouble.
The afternoon was a slog, but every painful kilometre meant one less to walk if Steph got another puncture. The terrain was hilly and close, with endless ups and downs to negotiate. We were now descending extremely carefully for the sake of Steph’s tyres, so the downhills became almost as slow as the uphills.
After 40km of this, we finally rejoined a road. I think Steph had never been so pleased to see a JCB.
The dirt road continued for a kilometre before transitioning to actual asphalt, which I will never take for granted again. Like the end of a piece of wool in the minotaur’s labyrinth, the yellow lines beckoned us back to civilization.
We were as zonked as we’d ever been. We skimmed along at what seemed impossibly high speeds until we found a depanneur to buy some things for dinner. We then pitched our tent in a halte municipal (lay by) and Steph went into a sort of fugue state from which she had to be gently coaxed with orangina.
It turned out to be another rather lovely camping spot, with a gorgeous sunset over the marsh which we barely had time to appreciate before we passed out.
Archy was very pleased to have found a way to bring together his love of the wilderness and his taste for kebabs: the portable donner (or rather donair, a Canadian variant).
Archy is just about managing a smile here but in fact we were both pretty distracted by the prospect of being mauled by a lurking bear, then being unable to call an ambulance and promptly being cremated by forest fire.
Phew – out of bear country. The relief soon faded when we realized that meant a grinding trudge up a never ending scree slope. No wonder the bears don’t bother venturing up here. 
A view best enjoyed from this photo. The same stillness that yielded that delightful reflection also meant that the air was thick with mosquitos. I was so busy swatting them off my face that I nearly fell into the lake.
A marmot – for a while we thought it might be a wolverine but alas it was not.
The Northover ridge for which the walk is named.
Top of the world
You are welcome.
Giant trees here in Canada.
Steph and Archy's Canadian Adventures 