We had a fun day in Montreal yesterday. We even took a Grayline bus tour, which is not something we would usually do. The bus tour got us out of downtown without having to cycle anywhere so we could see the Olympic Village and get to the top of Mont Royal, among other places. But even before that we started the day with a very leisurely breakfast which spanned a couple of hours. Service in restaurants is not fast, as you are expected to linger and enjoy your meal.

But today we were back on the bikes. Since our trip to Montreal took longer than expected we decided to forego riding to Quebec City and start heading back home, so we spent the morning retracing our route back south to St Jean sur Richelieu, then we turned east along a different leg of La Route Verte 1. Heading east from St Jean the route follows an old railway right of way and is mostly paved with crushed stone. The entire route today was pretty much dead flat, which you might think makes it easy but in fact becomes quite tedious. Since you never climb or descend you pretty much never alter your attitude on the saddle and you repeat the exact same pedaling motion all day. By the time we arrived here in Granby my legs were shot, though Jodi as usual was still feeling strong.

Along the way we stopped at a pizza place in a little town about 25km short of Granby for lunch. The older woman who waited on us spoke no English but with the help of another employee and one of their customers we managed to communicate just fine, and she was delighted with the little bits of French I could manage.

The trail we followed this afternoon went through the middle of “nowhere” with nothing but corn and hay fields as far as we could see, yet we constantly saw other cyclists along the trail. It’s amazing how many people we consistently see on La Route Verte even on weekdays.

We’ve got an 80+ mile (130+ km) day planned for yesterday, so we will try to get and early start and keep making steady progress. From here we’ll head through Waterloo then on to Magog, then down the east shore of Lake Memphremagog and cross back into the US at Derby VT.

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