Letter to a friend - Prevost (Shawbridge) to Rawdon ride

Hi P.

Something happened to me on road bike that never happened before. I had to backtrack.

I did a new ride from shawbridge in laurentians to Rawdon, coming back by a different way via Chertsey, Esterel/Ste Margeritte de lac masson and Ste-Adele.

The different way between Rawdon to Chertsey had a bridge. There was only one road over the river. Here was the only bridge. There were no alternatives.

The bridge was gone!

Brickabrackabruckaduckafruckawucka!

Actually, it was under construction, but there was no way across. (well, swimming with bike was an option, but a really bad one!). So I had some backtracking to do. luckily the backtrack was downhill, but I already had a really late start, but still I decided to continue the loop after the back-track, and finished quite a while after the sun had set.

When I saw the bridge was missing, boy, that wasn't a good feeling. When local people confirmed that there was no other bridge, that not good feeling didn't get any better!

This ride had tons of short hills, with some long ones thrown in, but generally short but steep (ever see cement on the road on a steep hill, it's because it pours out the back of the cement mixer on super steep hills, and there was a lot of cement on this ride!

122 km, finished after dark, deers jumping out in front of me too on the last section back to car from ste-adele to Shawbridge on p'tit train de nord (Val david to Shawbridge section of p'tit train de nord is a really beautiful away-from-roads-and-cars bike path, one of the nicest I've been on). Road quality was generally good to crappy, with a bit too much crappy.

Ahhh, the joy of exploration rides!

Take care