Return to Plessisville to Chaudiere-Appalaches / optimized route on bike-paradise roads only

We made a return to Plessisville / Chaudiere-Appalaches on Sunday. The landscape of this region is perfect hillz and we rode four perfect roads for cycling, three of them in both directions.

And we found out that Pont Barré can sometimes mean there is no bridge at all.

But this was no problem (for a change) and in fact we were looking for an excuse to take the roads we had arrived on back in the opposite direction. Because these are perfect cycling roads, in both directions.

The Route

Plessisville to St-Sophie-de-Halifax
     Warmup. Flats. Hills start at Ste-Sophie. Let the games begin!

Ste-Sophie-de-Halifax to bottom of Chemin Vianney road
     First big hill. up and up, and then lots of down. Excellent! Scenic too.

St-Vianney road up to this hilltop village, u-turn and ride down on Quebec's most perfect road (continue to Irlande.)
     Did we just say "Quebec's most perfect road?" We sure did.

Irlande on Chemin Craig to St-Jean-de-Brebeuf (east direction)
     Chemin Craig is an example of an excellent country road over the tops of hills.You're warmed up now. Rock it.

St-Jean-de-Brebeuf to Pont Mooney's bridge (Becancour river) on Chemin Hamilton (u-turn and  back to St-Jean-de-Brebeuf)
     We love Chemin Hamilton. The bridge (as of sept 2012) in under reconstruction and is 100% not crossable.  That's ok, turn around now and ride back. The roads are purr-fect for riding, and Chemin Hamilton is exceptional.


St-Jean-de-Brebeuf to St-Ferdinand on Chemin Craig (west direction)
     Upwardly fun, then a great ride down with great views down to St-Ferdinand.  Super great. We turn at St-Ferdinand, but this road continues renamed as Chemin Gosford for 10 km west to St-Julian. (note : if you do this you might get an idea about Vianney from the backside of the hill, but there is no back-route to Vianney, which would be a logical loop but is a real disaster of an trip-planning idea).


St-Ferdinand to Ste-Sophie-de-Paradise across Appalachian hills and valleys
     You enjoyed these hills at the start of the ride, and you know that the last hill of the ride is coming up soon.  Enjoy the scenery now, because giant windfarms are about to be installed and thus ruined scenically forever.This is just one more reason to do this ride as soon as possible.


Ste-Sophie-de-halifax to Plessisville
     some gentle terrain (finally!) to recover and back to Plessisville. The last section is on busy highway, but there are excellent paved shoulders.

This is a 100% great ride.


In other news, we have now used up all the free photo storage blogger - 2600 photos! So we have some work to do before we feed you any more pretty pictures. 

Plessisville Chaudiere-Appalache v6 - out and back to Pont Mooney's bridge Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

This ride has 1700 metres of climbing, that's 5600 in feet units. or one big happy all-day smile. Because it is also 1700 metres of downhill riding. Woohoo!

Route Variation: if you include Chemin Gosford to St-Julien, it will add 20 km and 300 m of climbing, bring the numbers up to 130 km for the ride distance and 2000m for the climbing, er, we mean descending.And this is the version we will do next time. We are not insane. Much.