Why we like our northern Lanaudiere ride

There are many things go combine to make a bike ride into a great bike ride.

We like our St-Jean-de-Matha / Ste-Emilie-de-l'Energie / Ste-Beatrix ride because:

• good distance
• good hills
• The two long hills have good descents after the summit is reached
• good scenery
• A few good scenic lookouts, one has benches (northbound to ste-emilie)
• good roads (mostly)
• quiet roads
• 97 km from Mtl car distance, not so far
• undeveloped area (no tims, macDo, other corporate crap)
• the ride is made up of many short sections
• many options exist to increase ride distance a bit
• easy to abort - many places you can call it quits and get back to car
• Good descents
• No jerkin' around with flats until the hills finally arrive (first 20% hill
• at 4 minutes into the ride)
• The two major highways part of the ride have good paved shoulders.
• There's a raspberry farm at foot of one of the major climbs
• There's annual repairs/rebuilding to the roads of this ride
• You feel like a tour de france mountain stage survivor by ride's end (and not
• one of those front-of-the-pack guys)

Add it up and you see why we think this is one of the best rides around.