Advice to a coworker

Our coworker A. saw the La Presse feature on Chateauguay valley cycling, and asked us, hey, that's your homeland, do you have a ride map and other info? He'd never been there even though he lives close to the pont Mercier bridge and is a long time hard-core rider.

Do we have info? Oh yeah! But do we have brevity too? Here's what we told him.

Hi A.

Thank's for considering visiting my homeland, the very-beautiful and beautifully rural Chateauguay valley. Here is the link for the map of my personal favorite chateauguay valley ride.

ity's a beauty, but at 80km it might be a bit long for you and your girlfriend.

So I made shorter version of the ride! This shorter ride is also a great one, the shortcut part of the ride is on the "dewittville-rockburn road" (we call it the dewittville side road) which had three pictures in the la presse article, it's a favorite for good reason!

Did we mention that Dewittville is in the book "Most Beautiful villages in Quebec"?

If this is still too long, you can cut 10 km off the Short Version ride by starting in Huntingdon, not Ormstown.

You could also ride ormstown-powerscourt and back again. The choices are endless, because the the triangle shape of the area offers many loop ride possibilities, short or long.

For services, along this ride the towns of Ormstown, Huntingdon, Athelstan and St-Antoine-Abbé have services.

For ther ride ideas, the Suroit tourism web site has three road-bike ride-maps of the chateauguay valley region, one of these might be good for you too.

If you park in Ormstown, the IGA mall at the entrance to town (at PetroCanada) has a tourist kiosk inside (maps) and a map-billboard outside.

For future reference, we do a big ride of the complete valley, ewe call it the Giant Chateauguay Valley ride and it is a good 130 km ride that you should have tailwind for the last 30 km. It includes the famous Covey hill climb and goes right past two aunts' and two grandparent's farms. This ride is an early seasom favorite, but is good anytime of the year.

My only big advice is to avoid or minimize using the numbered highways (Rt 138, 201, 202) on bike.

Enjoy!