Tag Archives: Matane

We decided to stay in Matane for the day because the town is quite nice and everything is close by. I have to say that the biking was fantastic! The town has a designated bike path that takes you to the commercial dock (the one that we toured yesterday when we were too early to go into the marina). After that, the bike path is a paved shoulder on a road that has many pretty little cottages and houses. The road is right on the St. Lawrence River and is very beautiful. I rode my bike for 15 km along the road and then it turns into the main highway. The main highway has an eight foot designated bike lane and there were many, many cyclists out and about. There were groups of keeners as well as regular people of all ages riding. I have to say that I have been more than impressed with the cycling in Quebec. Ontario is so far behind, it is sad.
Here is a picture of a cottage on the route:

Dennis took the bike out during the afternoon and he went even further. He made it to the next town – St. Ulric.

We bought our first seafood – scallops and shrimp. We were too lazy to walk all the way to the poissoninaire (fish market) so we got our supper at the Metro Plus. They had a good selection but it turned out that we somehow bought shrimp and scallops from Thailand. Oh well, it was tasty done on the barbecue. Next time, we will pay more attention.

Nothing else happened today – just the usual – shopping, laundry. Tomorrow, we are going to St. Anne-des-Monts. Dennis keeps calling it St. Anne de Mops. 🙂

Dennis bought at Washburn travelling guitar for the boat. It is quite small but we’ve been having lots of fun with it. We’re getting ready for our debut by practising Song for the Mira, Farewell to Nova Scotia and Sonny’s Dream. We practice way out on the water, so nobody can hear us. Maybe that’s why we’ve haven’t seen any whales lately!

The wind was in our favour this morning when we left at 5:15 am. It was very light and coming from the south west so we knew we had an easy to Matane. It was extremely uneventful – we only saw one very large beluga on the way. I made Dennis listen to the CBC (Q with Jian Ghomeshi) and it was a nice way to pass the time sailing down the St. Lawrence. Along the coast, are hundreds and hundreds of giant windmills – I’m sure they were going full bore yesterday but today, they were just moving slowly.

We made such good time that we were way too early to go into Matane – you cannot access the marina during low tide. Dennis called the harbourmaster and he told us to wait for an hour, so we went back to the commercial harbour and toured it. (Not too exciting but we had an hour to kill).
At 2:30, we arrived at the marina and tied up the boat. Then we went downtown for a good walk for an hour and a half. We debated whether or not we should take the ferry over to Baie Comeau tomorrow to see Brian Mulroney but decided against it.

We had supper and then noticed that there was a man in a while housecoat walking around outside of the hotel which was across the way. We thought he was maybe going to his car, but he just kept walking and we don’t know where he went or why he was in a robe. This was at about 5:30. Then, we checked out our boat neighbour. He was standing on his boat with a very long ladder, leaned up against the mast and was attempting to climb it! Thank goodness, he gave that up!

We went for a walk along the beach and I got a good photo of the sunset.

We returned to the boat and noticed that the neighbour had moved on to another project – this one a little more safe. He was trying to attach his sail, so of course, Dennis could not resist and is over there helping him. He speaks no French and the other guy speaks very little English but they seem to be getting along (and the ladder is safely in the man’s truck).

Speaking of French, when we were checking out the town, I pointed out the boulangerie in hopes that Dennis will ride the bike over to it and get some fresh bread or croissants for our breakfast tomorrow morning. He thought it was a place to buy negligees! I don’t know how he has been in Quebec for a whole month! 🙂