Quebec: Bas-Saint-Laurent

This adventure follows easy cycling terrain through a viscerally French, historic area known as the Navigator’s Route. Most of the roads are now paved and well-signposted, but you will follow the same path as the first explorers: Jacques Cartier, and founder of Québec City, Samuel de Champlain. The gently rolling, quiet country roads on the southern shore of the mighty Saint Lawrence River take you to quaint Québeçois villages including five of the "25 Most Beautiful Villages in the Province", and a progression of gastronomic pleasures. You will rest in truly unique places, from the lighthouse on Île Verte, to a cozy, wood-floored mansion set among beautiful gardens. In Trois Pistoles, when the fog rolls in from the river, the jazz bar becomes a favourite retreat, and your idiosyncratic inn will charm you with its rural flair. According to local lore, this is where you can meet the devil if you visit the cross in the gleam of the full moon. As you cycle along the St. Lawrence River’s banks, observing the shorebirds and wildlife, admiring the waterfront homes reminiscent of turn-of-the-century seaside resorts, and marvelling at the traditional eel nets reaching out to sea, you might even catch a glimpse of passing whales. In the evening, you can enjoy the sun setting over the Charlevoix Mountains north of the river - rated by the National Geographic as one of the most beautiful sunsets in the world.