Day 15. Heading into Quebec City.

Lyster to Quebec City

9/1/23. 51mi. AIS: 4:52. 10.4 mph. Elev. 941

Our Hosts

Marietta and Irenee have been hosting cyclists since 2014. They are retired dairy farmers. Sold the cows and land to neighbors. They’ve cycled the US from west to east and Mexico to their home, cycled Europe too! I’m guessing they are mid 70’s. They ride carbon frame road e- bikes now with friends on backroads in their area.

They treated us to early morning breakfast before they were off at 7:15am to play tennis. We were packed up and on the road ourselves at 8am.

Into the City

Our surfaced changed to asphalt after 12 km so we were rolling faster. At our lunch stop we also made sure we knew how to navigate through the community of Levi’s where all the freeways converge to bridges over the St Lawrence into QC. It always gets complicated going into cities. Bike paths stop and start.. especially here. We made it in time to catch the 3pm ferry to QC. Then it took us about an hour to make our way up, up, up to our next hosts house. (A walk-up)

Chaudiere River and Chaudier Falls Park

We are staying at the home of Aimee and Ewan, daughters Fiona and Tessa. They are friends of our Southern Tier cycling friend, Sandy the Scottish bagpiper. They met Sandy when they all lived in Scotland. Anyway, Sandy hooked Aimee and I up and she graciously offered her basement apartment of her house for our couple days layover to visit the City! Thank you Sandy, thank you Aimee and family! There will be more on this visit coming this weekend. We are happy to have days off the bike and do some city walking. Maybe some stairs!!

Warmshowers

This organization started around the same time as “couch surfing”. It is a US organization but has hosts all over the world. I think it has many many more in Europe because bicycle travel is much more prevalent. People offer bedrooms, tent camp, bathrooms.. even meals. Whatever they want actually. It is typically one night but who knows? We are hosts in Billings and Have hosted once. Billings does not get very many traveling cyclists. You join the organization and there’s an app to find hosts all over the world. Generally it is one or two day notice. Anything more than that is hard for the host and the cyclist to confirm. Anyway, it’s a great organization and we were happy to make use of it.